When Dying Is Not Hard

Administration Sending Military to Border to Stop Caravan: Headline

If they will shoot asylum seekers
    It bodes ill—very ill— 
But mercy is not mixed in beakers,
    Concoction volatile.

Like nitro: if the scene explode
    Protect me from the shard,
Yet if shall pass what times forbode
    The dying is not hard.

To balance off this life, one death,
    So much holds claim on me,
But let me not, with a single breath
    Approve such infamy.

They flee from terror, seeking help:
    If I do not affirm
Humanity, then I myself
    Crawl lower than a worm.

Troops “follow orders.” If they do
    And gun the seekers down
Inflicting horror, we accrue
    Much blame and blot to own.