The Reality Of War lyrics

War, it is for younger men

Naive to the world's ways

Lured by pomp and circumstance

They are blinded by the harsh reality

That binds veterans forever to that world

A calamity where there is no relief

Fascade of indestructability and manhood give way

Where their last moments of realized terror

On the eternal abyss that is death

Death for a poor lost transgressor

But as cattle mill on to the abattoir, they march on

I saw them, my comrades, brothers in arms

That as I grew older and surviving

Saw they, my sons, my grandchildren, my charges go

While others went through the motions

In a voiceless cacoffamy

Through the generations men forget

The cost of war, the price of freedom

When shall we learn,

Not in my time I fear

The drums, the bugles keep playing

Boots clap upon the ground like a crowd's applause

The sacred earth annointed in blood

Soaking into the land in a growing veneration

Pretty poppies and crosses all in a row

My heart weeps, my spirit aches

Such a horrible truth to know

Unbelieved, unspoken, unknown

Marching on in endless caissons

All finding the same destination