Two Warriors

In the late hours of a hot summer day, two enemy warriors lay on a bloodied battlefield. Each has mortally wounded the other, and has lost their strength to land the fatal blow. Exhausted, sweating, and quickly losing blood, they sit up against opposite trees and face each other. 

One bears a red sigil across his chest and rests in the shade of his mighty oak. The other displays a blue crest across his shoulder and grows weak below the arms of a willow.

The warrior wearing a red sigil slowly removes a pen and paper from his satchel, wipes the sweat from his brow, and squints at the blank page. 

“What are you doing?” the warrior with a blue sigil asks. 

The red warrior glances up at his foe.

“I’m writing my death poem,” he answers. 

“What will it be?” inquires the blue one. 

The red soldier pauses for a moment, shakes his head, and answers, 

A red setting sun 

Clears away the ashen trees

It is a bright day

Katsu!

The blue-crested soldier ponders a moment and his face wrinkles in disgust. 

“Why, that’s no poem at all,” he says, shuffling his fingers. 

“How can you say such a thing?” the red warrior scoffs, “I do not believe that you would be a poet.” 

“Maybe not,” blue says, “but even so I could do better than that.” 

“Oh yeah?” red chuckles, “and how’s that?” 

“Well,” blue shrugs, “Are you writing a Haiku or a Tanka? Your structuring doesn’t follow the rules of either. You’re wasting syllables on words such as ‘it’ and ‘is’ and ‘a’. And ‘Katsu’? Are you scolding the reader? Claiming victory? Resuscitating someone? Attaining enlightenment? No, no sense at all. The word has many different meanings, and I don’t see any of them as appropriate here.”

“Perhaps it is inferred I have become enlightened,” red argues, becoming annoyed at the bold criticisms.

“Ha!” shouts the blue warrior with an extra pump of blood from his wounds, “as if anything were to be inferred from such dribble. Try again.”

Disgruntled, the red warrior scratches out the text of his first poem and begins again: 

My blue enemy

Speaks as though he knows what’s wise

What an idiot

“Amusing!” the blue warrior laughs, “if only you didn’t waste your time and ink on such an insult. Your jest is better written this time, yet shows a lack of ability to conjure something of significant reflection.”

“Be this poem remembered for all of time, you remain the laughing stock!” red boasts.

“Is that so? Or is it the child whose last ink was spent in rage because he couldn’t handle a touch of critique?” blue fires back. 

“Enough!” the red one says, “I shall write another, and this one will surely impress your painfully obsessive mind.”

The red warrior digs within his creative consciousness, wrinkles his sweating face, and focuses on the paper, hastily scribbling down his new death poem. One that will surely be remembered for a millenia or more. One that will place him amongst the stars with the greatest death poets.

Red sun sets

Across the forest

And casts shadows

Across my bloody gown

And Katsu!

“No, stop!” the blue warrior cries out, “no good! The repetition of ‘across’? ‘Katsu’ again? Using the word ‘and’ not only once but twice? You’re wasting syllables and boring me tremendously.”

“Again!” the red warrior shouts back, “it is you who wastes time and energy! Criticizing my every word and judging my writing! So what if my creation is an insult to you, an ode to my battles, or a love letter to the moon? It could be anything I want it to be!”

“It could be, but perhaps it should also be good?” the blue warrior urges, “be original, and be concise!”

“Beautiful language does not allow one to be concise,” red says. 

“One does not build a bridge to wind around the river, but to cross it directly. Beauty derives from the power in what is said with few words.” 

“But there is so much to say.” 

“Cut the excess. In dealing with form, there are word restraints.”

“You seem quite adamant about this,” the red warrior wipes a mixture of sweat and blood from his brow, “perhaps you should write a poem to prove me wrong.” 

“I would only encourage you to improve your skills instead of attempting to steal mine.”

“Steal yours?” red lets out a full-bellied laugh, “don’t flatter yourself so much!” 

“It would be a sad day if a great poet such as yourself would have to take the credit of such a lowly soldier like me,” blue says, looking down and away at the ground. 

“Ah, enough, my enemy and critic. I will give no pity and I have wasted enough of my energy on frustration with you. I will write another poem, and I will write about something I truly love.” 

This time, the red warrior reflects and thinks for a great period of time, searching deep within himself for the right words to spill out on the page. Suddenly, with an exertion of hidden spirit, he picks his pen back up and writes out the poem: 

If I loved the moon

Why only look where sun shines

Night brings beauty, too

Breathing in deep with nostalgia and the fruitful memories of pondering the moon as a child, the red warrior finds peace within himself. He senses the feeling of fulfillment already releasing the tension in his muscles, and gives way to the breeze of death under his mighty oak tree. Almost immediately, the blue warrior lurches forward and drags his wounded self across the soil to the body of his opponent. He takes the freshly written death poem in his hand, crawls back to his weeping willow, and signs his name upon the paper. 

In the shade of the draping branches, the blue warrior smiles at the parchment in his hands as death comes for him, too.

“What a great poem.”