Lay Down Your Arms

Lay Down Your Arms
by Michael R. Burch

 
Lay down your arms; come, sleep in the sand.
The battle is over and night is at hand.
Our voyage has ended; there's nowhere to go . . .
the earth is a cinder still faintly aglow.
 

Lay down your pamphlets; let's bicker no more.
Instead, let us rest here on this ravaged shore.
The sea is still boiling; the air is wan, thin . . .
lay down your pamphlets; now no one will “win.”
 

Lay down your hymnals; abandon all song.
If God was to save us, He waited too long.
A new world emerges, but this world is through . . .
so lay down your hymnals, or write something new.
 

If I remember things correctly, I wrote this poem in my early twenties, probably as a college sophomore or junior. It was one of my first acceptances by a literary journal, The Romantist. But I never received a copy, so I can’t be sure it was actually published, drat!