Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Uncivil engineering

** uncivil engineering **
Digging from the boundaries
Lifting self above battlements
Mining beneath emplacements
An engineer gone to war
Turning knowledge of civil works
To how to kill or to protect
Laying concrete for artillery
Bridges to promote attacks
The civil engineer has turn marital
A most terrible beast
In fighting so matter a fact
Calculates the angles between success and failure
Manage logistics to point of perfection
Then unleashes the pent up energy
Of six months planning and will
Over to the men the mission turned
To the men who must bleed or die
If this victory is to be earned
And if defeat arrives
In truckloads of dead and maimed
To the drawing boards return
The maps in scale intricate
To models and plans and flags
To organise the next grand push
Next magnificent effort of mind and will
To thwart the enemy or defeat them
The civil engineer sets his goal
Blocking out mechanised murder
Hell of plans which have failed
The dead comrades who he sent
To their deaths without earning victory
No wonder he dreams of
Days when the guns have fallen silent
And to bridges and roads and dams
He can turn mind and stylus
For betterment of all men work
In peacetime prosperity design.

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