Poetry:
2005 New South Wales Writers' Centre Poetry Sprint prize".
IT'S NOT YOUR WAR
Let your finger linger on the trigger, Digger;
free your hold of the cold A-grade grenade;
set aside your bayonet; get inside for a cigarette.
Soldier, certainly you’re in the corps
but plainly it’s not your war.
You’re not immoral; you’re not amoral;
you have no quarrel
with the man caught in your line of fire;
it’s a plan thought up by men of ire,
old men sending young men to shred and kill;
old men spending their time on Federal Hill;
old men who consign young men to die;
old men whose design is to sell and buy
so, Soldier, be bolder;
you should shun shell fire; you’re no gun for hire;
you’re no whore and what’s more, it’s not your war.
You’re in the right to refuse to fight.
Hell, how these old men crow they’re right—they lie;
well, let these old men go and fight and die.
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