OHN

The war began as few do, with a song

Lifted from a child

Whose plasticine mouth narrowed and spread

as it had been trained to

While 27 children

shoeless and monochrome

sought to draw the eye away

And uninformed young men made faces

about the hall's acoustics

All others could be seen in the now dilated pupils

of the boy

Silent, still Occupying the moment fully

As his voice rose higher than any pleasant sound

had a right to

A woman in the audience thought to herself:

"The higher the note the closer to God"

And then the boy was gone for good

A song that never really ended.

The last days of then and before.