The Young Warrior Poem by Richard Keller

Don't touch love unless you can cry
Nor raise a gun unless prepared to die.

The lacerated arm rests on the guns wheel
His rifle now too ponderous to lift
The pain gone, only emptiness to feel
The helmet fallen from the bloody head
Only waiting now to enroll with the dead

What use the orders, the martial songs
His life such value to him alone
The propaganda of the enemies wrongs
The boyish pranks, the love he had known.
The experience of times past
Ebbing through a mist so fast.

He raised his gun unprepared to die
Now his family left to mourn and cry.