A Good Man in an Evil Time
This is the story I was told – I’ve omitted
the details which might identify
and narrow down the nation,
the place, the family, the man…
It was in his teens, at school,
when the national leader arose
to bring the nation to its future,
its fulfilment, its destiny; so, like
his fellows, he joined the youth corps,
their eyes shining with ideals.
When the war inevitably came,
the time to show the world,
he was conscripted as a soldier.
He was not easy with this; killing for any noble cause
was not in his beliefs; he sought advice
in every holy book of every faith,
and knew within himself that he was right:
life is in the gift of the gods, and not of men.
One against the many, what could he do?
Should he commit suicide, there and then,
or its equivalent, disobey until he was shot,
unrecorded, unpublicised? That too,
he felt was wrong, life denied.
He decided to do just what he was told;
but at night, alone, to lay all this in prayer
at the feet of God; to sleep then and awake
with a conscience washed by that same God
who, it seemed, allowed wars just and unjust
for reasons which few men may unravel.
As war continued, this model soldier
rose within the ranks; and by an irony of fate
was chosen to be on the staff
of the death camps now being secretly set up.
How intense his prayer now became;
how testing was this time.
The details of this now are all known
(more than even those involved then knew) :
after the war, when the trials of war criminals
attempted human justice, some leaders
felt that suicide was the honourable death;
some lived in hope, were tried and hanged;
some committed to life imprisonment
to repent their life; or not.
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poem by Michael Shepherd
Added by Poetry Lover
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