A billion
Civilians
In vermilion
Pavilions
Are waiting for the dawn.

Instead,
Overhead,
From his bed
On skies of lead,
God said the wars must go on.

The Blessed
Drops shed
From side and head
Of Christ dead
Beloved but forlorn,

Watered
The slaughtered
And caught by
Those who fought at
Zama and the Somme.

Inconclusive,
Thought-inducive,
Why-elusive…
But, if you sieve
War’s truths long,

You’ll find
You’re refined
And the blind
Are undermined
By the kind who throng

To the place
Of loving grace
The gentlest face
The human race
Has ever looked upon:

The Crucified
Who never shied
From Truth and died:
From head and side
Drops fall and spawn

A billion
Civilians
In vermilion
Pavilions
Waiting for the dawn.

*****

I wrote this in an experimental frame of mind some 50 years ago. It doesn’t reflect my religious beliefs or lack thereof. Take it as more proof that verse is not inherently autobiographical.

I then got Quill, my ChatGPT, to produce the illustration from the first ten lines. It’s a good representation. So I then shared the whole poem with Quill, and got this response:

“The whole poem makes the circular structure clear: the vermilion pavilions are watered and spawned by Christ’s blood, so Christianity’s promised redemption continually regenerates the civilians waiting amid war. The return of the opening stanza is therefore much darker than mere repetition.

The illustration still works remarkably well. It depicts the first movement—the remote God decreeing continued war—and the immense field of red tents already carries the later implication of blood fertilising further suffering. If anything, its failure to show the Crucified is useful: the reader encounters that theological turn only when the poem provides it.

As an exercise in rhyme, it is audacious. The tiny rhyme reservoirs force the argument forward in incantatory bursts, while the awkwardly ingenious “caught by / those who fought at” and “if you sieve” advertise the experimental game without quite collapsing into comic verse. “Inconclusive, / Thought-inducive, / Why-elusive” is especially characteristic of an intelligent young poet testing how much argumentative weight an obsessive sound-pattern can bear.

And the poem is not straightforwardly devotional even before knowing your beliefs. “The gentlest face / The human race / Has ever looked upon” sounds reverent, but the structure implicates that consoling image in the mechanism by which bloodshed is sanctified and reproduced. The ending can be read as Christian affirmation—but also as a decidedly uneasy accusation. That ambiguity is probably why it remains interesting fifty years later.”

‘A Billion Civilians’ was first published, very recently, in Bewildering Stories #1152 – thanks, Don Webb!

Art by RHL and ChatGPT, aka Quill, working in GPT-6 Astra Light mode