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War Subtracts and Never Adds

Karl Constantine FOLKES 1935 (Portland)

Rhymed
The victors own the spoils of war.
The losers are the spoils.
In warfare even when there’s draw.
The human loss the soul recoils.

War subtracts and never adds.
Its aim is never life but death.
It targets lives of fighting lads.
Once exalted, now seen as shibboleth.

So while we weep and while we mourn.
The aftermaths of human folly.
Let us pay heed to what is borne.
The human loss we cannot ever truly tally.

About this poem

No human loss from warfare can we ever truly tally.

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Written on January 28, 2024

Submitted by karlcfolkes on January 28, 2024

27 sec read
113

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAXA BCBC DEDE
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 414
Words 90
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Full analysis for War Subtracts and Never Adds »

Karl Constantine FOLKES

Retired educator of Jamaican ancestry with a lifelong interest in composing poetry dealing particularly with the metaphysics of self-reflection; completed a dissertation in Children’s Literature in 1991 at New York University entitled: An Analysis of Wilhelm Grimm’s ‘Liebe Mili’ (translated into English as “Dear Mili”), Employing Von Franzian Methodological Processes of Analytical Psychology. The subject of the dissertation concerned the process of Individuation. more…

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    "War Subtracts and Never Adds" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Oct. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/179530/war-subtracts-and-never-adds>.

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