My new shipping, SOAD/Hetalia!
Enjoy!
They were crying when their sons left.
God is wearing black.
He's come so far to find no hope
He's coming going back.
The world probably would not have witnessed such a small but entirely diverse group, had the members of this group not been the world themselves.
Dozens of figures stood in a colossus of a courtyard. But instead of wearing dress clothes and attending some sort of getting-together function, they were all wearing black and weren't here by leisure. And instead of the great courtyard being awash with flowerbeds and expensive art, it was a patch-work of different grasses and was pinned with graves.
It really ought to have been raining, but the nations did not need miserable weather to feel dismal. They stood as black, stoic pillars amongst wood and marble and stone; brown, grey and white; of plaques and crosses and statues. The different grasses of the assortment of locations seemed sewed together, various seedlings having their borders crushed together to form this one World Graveyard.
There were many memorial days for separate nations to grieve and mourn, but very few where all of the world could come together to do it.
All of the main national memorials lay in the small courtyard in the middle of the vast cross-crested fields, awash with poppies, photographs and flowers. Each nation clutched their own bouquet, standing in a grim silence.
There was female weeping (and certain males), the tears coming and going, a sombre interruption to the quiet.
Here, the nations did not purposefully avoid eyes out of spite. Here, the nations did not gripe or argue or bicker.
Eyes cast around at the benevolent angels with welcoming arms, the splendid mausoleums down to the mass-produced. All engravings of their sons and daughters. Heads calmed but minds filled with memories – shells whistling right behind their ears and spitting bullets terrorising the air, the cries of the dying and the squelch of the dead and mud underfoot. The desperate running and the shouted warnings – leaping behind shrapnel and tossing grenades – helms swinging from their sweaty foreheads, panicked eyes picking through the destruction. The trenches and the no man's land, endless days of waiting out the deadly whistling. Watching young boys sign up to make his nation proud then watch as a semi-automatic tears the life out of him so far away from home.
They mourn today and forever, an eternal weight that hardened in their very bones like dirty crystals.
The flowers go down, the century- and millennia-old veterans salute. Eyes fall shut or stare into the distance or wrestle with tears. They are all standing close enough to notice if a back begins to shudder.
Every nation here understood the magnitude of the consequences of their arguments, imposed brutally by the millions of gravestones piling far into the horizon. Here was the evidence of the millions they had lost, and some they never even found.
They were crying when their sons left
All young men must go.
He's come so far to find the truth
He's never going home.
I've always been grimly infatuated with war, that is it so intrisically tied with love, tradegy, romance and poetry. System of a Down have very political, poetic songs, often regarding politics, foreign policies, conflicts and the current war on terrorism. But those things seem too simple and straightforward, but you get the gist. SOAD has always been thought provoking, loads of their songs/videos can bring me to tears. So I figure, Hetalia, war and contemporary lyric poetry is a good mix. If you have any thoughts or comments, please review
