I will bake a cake - a poem by Chris Zachariou

war - Cyprus 1974

My darling son,

there is a cry for war

across the land

by those who have no sons

and it calls for you to fight.

We wave goodbye

then I see the gun

across your shoulder

and I nearly die.

My darling son,

when the war is over

and the guns fall silent,

when there is peace

over our ravaged land,

I will bake a cake;

we will sing, we will dance

and we shall eat the fatted calf.

Forty years have flown by

and the young soldier

has not come home yet

until one day in March

a truck rolls into the tiny town

carrying in its back a coffin with

the missing soldier's bones.