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Perhaps you'd grasp the reasons why
if you had helped a buddy die,
and heard his savage shrieks of pain,
and shoved his guts inside again,
and breathed the stink of burning blood,
first a trickle, then a flood,
--why then, my friend, and only then,
would you know where I have been.
When you have touched his face in death
and felt his final, gasping breath,
and tasted the rancid spit
from clouds of flesh and sundered grit,
and surged with waves of helpless rage
for bombers vanished from the stage
--why then, my friend, and only then,
would you be where I have been.
When you then turn from Him above,
abandon faith in grace or love,
and chose the paths that must descend
to where the demon snarls within,
unleash it to avenge them all,
yet live to witness your own fall,
--why then, my friend, and only then,
would you be what I have been.
So when you're done, and must return
from where such vicious hatreds burn
to just reclaim the life you knew,
but find war's not done with you,
and taunts your thoughts and tortured dreams
with restless dead and silenced screams,
--why then, my friend, and only then,
dare you presume to judge my sin.