A Man inside a Tank

A Poem for the Brave Men and Women in the IDF

A man inside a tank, 
A boy to be exact,
One and twenty was his age, 
When his country called him back. 

Four boys inside a tank, 
Poised for the attack, 
Their guns all at the ready, 
Their feelings all pushed back. 

No time to feel their feelings, 
No time to think their thoughts, 
No time to spend on healing, 
That’s what this war has wrought. 

Four boys inside a tank, 
Hear the pounding of the flak,
That shakes their metal cage, 
From the enemy’s attack. 

Oil and gunpowder, 
The only smells that they now know. 
The guns keep pounding louder, 
Like their hearts that never slow. 

A man inside a tank, 
His family worried sick, 
No way to give them comfort, 
When the fog of war is thick. 

A world of smoke and ash,
Is that now all there is? 
Their neurons fire fast, 
To pull their triggers quick. 

Four boys inside a tank, 
Their childhood now gone, 
So much older than their rank, 
So much greater than the songs. 

A boy of twenty-one, 
Becomes a man at twenty-two, 
Bar Mitzvahed in hellfire,
The day that he was born anew. 

Those boys we sent away, 
None of them came back, 
Some died and some escaped,
But only men came back. 

The horrors of this war, 
So much more than death and dying, 
More than the blood and gore, 
And the sound of mothers crying.

The end of adolescence, 
For a country once so young, 
A new country has been born, 
A new era has begun. 

For out of all this pain, 
And out of all this strife, 
A new world we must create, 
One that’s filled with life. 

~

Spread Love, Spread Life,

Am Yisrael Chai