LEPERS

Close up before the battle

No stigma showed

No erosion of facial cartilage

Of joint of hands

There must have been

A silent wasting

A progressive loss

A numbness without pain

At least that illness

We could understand

For centuries the only cure

Was the need to kill to bathe in the blood of children

To be saved

We saw the fighting distatly

On television

Forked tongues blackening

Defoliated hills

It must have happned something like that

It must have been

Rank on rank returning regiments like that..

No lesion visible

The boots in step protest