The Argument Before Battle

a poem

He was buckling on his shoulder plates, attaching them at the breast, 
When she came to him at the fireside with her quiver across her chest.
"There's torchlight on the hills," he said, "and horns sounding in the east."
"We'll be caught in between," she replied, "for they come too from the west."

"I go to the hills tonight," he declared, "where the wolves of war come to fight.
Put your bow away and stay. Let me do what God said is right;
For I go to war to preserve you, the most precious of all I have.
What else is the fighting for, Love, but you, my treasure, to save?"

"So it was at the Battle of Troy," she replied, "of Roses and the Conquest of Peru.
And while you men went slaughtering, the devil went slaughtering you."
"That's who I face on the hills," he pointed. "I see his ravenous teeth."
"That's who hides in the west," she replied. "Waiting to attack from beneath."

"Are we not many men?" he asked. "Can we all sides not defend?"
"What of the bloodlust," she replied, "that makes you blind in the end?
And what of the sappers," she continued, "who tunnel beneath flesh and bone
exploiting the goodness that's gone when man is with men alone."

"I'm not alone on the hills," he said. "I have the Lord with me."
"You go as only half," she said, "if you leave to fight without me."
"How will I stand before God," he asked, "if you are hurt in the fray?"
"How will we stand at all," she asked, "if God meant us together to stay?"

Then he dropped to his knees on the ground, his armor silver in light.
And she to her knees too to pray for this they'd practiced each night,
Rehearsing together to be at work and travel and play,
And now united in war against an enemy unseen to the eye.

This enemy counts on division to conquer and ravish at will,
Never thinking we'll stand together, world, flesh, and sin to kill—
Too different, too stubborn, too frail, too quiet, too loud, too bold—
Men and women, like rulers conquering, as God through Christ foretold.

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