Harvest
Copyright © Edward Stewart Cahoon's Family. All rights reserved.


I worked in the fields today,
Reaping the crap that others had sown,
And because of the work I've done today,
Someone in grief and anquish will moan,
For loss of brother, lover, or son.

For I work in the battlefield,
And I'm reaping the crap, that hate has sown.
I get a most excellant yield of blood, guts, bones,
With symphony of screams and moans.

How many dreams and lives have I reaped,
In reaping this crap, in bitterness, sown?
What burdens of sorrow have I heaped
on heart and shoulder not my own?
Surely many will mourn !

I did right well today, in the fields
Worked right well and with a will.
Twill be an exceptionally heavy yield,
A tribute to a reaper's skill.
Odd how they lie so still !

See this one lying here on his back,
Hands on chest as in respose,
An excellent specimen, Tho' he lacks a leg
And some guts, an eye and a nose.
Someone will cry for him, I suppose.

Who are they, that sowed these fields?
Surely they are known.
They may well be proud, of the excellent yields
And happy to hear the groans,
Now stilled, as Earth devours the bones.

Death works no more with me in the fields,
( He was my helper you know )
Crosses now are the only yields.
The crap lies just below.
They tell me t'was worth it, but do they know ?

T'was an awful price we paid in the fields,
For they had a bountiful harvest sown
And now that the fate of millions is sealed
Can you tell me why was (I to come home ? *)


~ Edward Stewart Cahoon,
Platoon Leader and Scout
for the "T-Patch", 36th Infantry.


* * The copy I ( Colleen Cahoon )have of this poem,
written by my father, was a very poor one,
failing to include,

the very last words, of the last line...
I barely could make out the "was" but
obviously more was meant to follow..
'tell me why was..'

I believe it would have been
that which I wrote in the end...

Because he posed that question to me,
with tears in his eyes,
on more than one occassion...

"Why did so many,
good and beautiful men die
and I,

Eddie God Damned Cahoon,
came home?"


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