Journal for the Study of Peace and Conflict "A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread." Erich Marian Remargue
	A Soldier Returns I swore I would return and here I stand a foreigner in my own shoes sunburnt, silent, and twice too large for my best suit, the one I wore to church that final morning you knelt and spoke of me to your two soft hands flowers curling upon the altar and priests waved absently at Jesus from a yellow smoke. When we rose squeaking at unfamiliar seams, you kissed the air beside my face because your own was wet or mine was not. My cheeks are teary now and scarred. The sign of my humanity is marked in blood upon my forehead. Unholy Brotherhood, the common drear descent to solitary ends, steel, stone and finally sloughing off the precious skin. They lied, Mother, how they lied: the enemy is no effigy of paper, straw and painted rings patient in our sights, nor howling beasts from hell athirst for gory murder. The enemy wears boots, his eyes are mine. Fear rises from his shoulders like a halo. You'd be surprised how easily skin peels away beneath a sharpened spade. II. We lay by night in a graveyard. The stars blew apart with roars with clacking teeth, a hundred tombs reopening in the ground. Men flew grey shells raining a double death upon us. Now we and they are one in tilled chill earth. On sunny mornings their mothers sing us lullabyes root for weeds beneath dark clouds of lace. III. Who was the youth plucked violets for your Sunday table, propped shiny boots beside an unmade bed? A solid bed-- feather quilts, clean sheets-- oh for a pillow of soft sand. The ground lurches my feet are dust this bed too narrow for my soldier's grin. Something crept down my neck to steal my dreams, left chocolate, bullets and a dry canteen. IV. They called me lucky: there were more cigarettes than fingers. Here a man may strike a match and cleave the world-- far cry from those forst frail puffs of childish rebellion, when the teacher trapped us in the yard and broke his stick across our backs. Tobacco slid sickly down our throats for weeks, an early taste of what it means to be caught. But you urged me to take orders always orders. One red dawn I drew on clothing backwards in my haste, carried out my boots lest you awaken to the march. Your Bible lay before the open window page upon page of gelded angel wrestling with the Word. Were you to look up from your rope of psalms you would not recognize me. V. I have no memories to make me whole again. I'd give a month's dry pay for one clear glass of water. The eyes of my brother hunt my sleep, glowing suns that burst in milkwhite streamers. My pockets cannot hold these empty arms. My skin gives off a sulphur, fear and I want to come home please but can only wait, unmoving in your doorway. © Rob Baum Rob Baum has lived in lumber, fire and survey camps, worked on tall ships and commercial boats in the Alaskan and New England maritime, taught in an Inupiat Eskimo village and counseled battered women and their children. Her post-doctorate concerned gender, gesture and ritual among the Yemenites. She teaches theatre movement and applied performance theory in the Department of Theatre, University of Haifa, Israel.
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