A CHange of Mind

	A Change of Mind

The great man was dying;
The priest was on his way.
The old women were crying,
the tears hadn't long to stay.

They wondered that he'd called a priest,
He'd had small use for them before.
Little love he'd shown, but at least-
no guilt, man or boy, peace or war.

The Father was still a shy young man,
he knew the General by repute alone.
His deeds he'd heard from the sacristan,
of the man himself, little was known.

"Now boy", he growled, "take my confession.
The first since I would have called you old.
For I'm feeling I'll need your intercession,
'less God has more mercy than I've been told."

The priest was surprised by these sudden demands,
but only for a moment, for well he'd been taught.
He knew that the man's soul was now in his hands,
and maybe the last battle was yet to be fought.

Perhaps some weakness, unknown to the world,
some peccadillo, trivial except in his mind,
an epithet, God's name, thoughtlessly hurled,
mustn't take it too lightly, cruel to be kind.

But the great man had other sins to avow,
and little enough time to make them clear.
"What I did was wrong, I know that now,
but then weakness seemed much too near."

"There was a man once, whose spirit I broke,
de-balled his brain, as one would a horse.
For the sin of saying that I and my folk,
had manners perhaps a little too coarse."

Another poor man, I killed in a duel,
They called it fair, but that was a lie,
For I knew him a vainglorious fool,
and by his hand I'd never die.

There's the hill I took that couldn't be taken.
Hear the celebratory bell across the way.
But its morning peals will never awaken
those that I lead to death that day.

Of deaths themselves I have no regret,
a body's but a bloody bag of bones.
And if not I, then who else would set
the date for a thousand whitened stones ?

But when a tree falls in a crowded wood,
crashing and smashing towards the ground.
More damage than you'd ever think could
is brought upon the innocents close around.

If a clock is stopped, and then restarted,
if the hourglass takes a change of sand,
time flows on; but once life's departed
there's no way back that I understand.

So now I grieve for those who grieved,
in my dreams, that's all I ever see.
Perhaps their sorrow will be relieved
when no one cares to grieve for me.

So sweet Jesus, may you hear my prayer,
I know that even your killers, you forgave.
Can you orgive now this old homme de guerre
those things I did when men called me brave ?