This poem began, quietly, as a
reckoning. I wanted to understand why, in every era, the same fever spreads under different banners.
It never starts with generals; it starts with longing — to be certain, to belong, to mean something. And so the bravely foolish rise again, convinced that dying well can redeem a world built on fear.
Each war, I think, is a mirror. We keep mistaking the reflection for the enemy. The battlefield moves, but the impulse doesn’t; it lives in the heart’s suspicion of its own good.
I wrote this in Melbourne, in the cool air of early Autumn 2026 — a season of calm light and quiet foreboding. The leaves turn to flame without a sound, and you can almost
believe that beauty, too, remembers what it cost.
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What Causes Bloody War
“Every age begins with hope and ends with reason’s rust.
Man makes his meaning from the dust.”
