Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.

Franz Andres Morrissey

46 years old
Berne, Switzerland

Born 1957 in Altdorf, central Switzerland, degree in Applied and Ph.D. in Sociolinguistics, founder of the Creative Writing Workshop at Berne University, the first of its kind in Switzerland, poems published and plays performed in Switzerland, readings in the UK, Eastern Europe and Armenia.

Andromache

  How brilliantly the warrior smiled in silence
  his eyes rested upon the child! Andromache
  rested against him, shook away a tear  (Homer: Illiad)

A brief embrace before
he returns to battle,
my breast against his breastplate,
his arms around me and
our small son.

The pictures appear out of nowhere:
a body tied to a chariot, dragged through the dust,
a small boy flung from the highest rampart of the city wall,
a mighty warrior at an altar bludgeoning an old man to death,
women herded together, reviewed, parcelled out to triumphant warlords,
a rocky sea shore I do not know.

I blink back the images
and watch the tear
fall on his gauntlet.
He puts down the child,
picks up his helmet
and is gone.

© Franz Andres Morrissey 2003

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