Uttermost

Why did they come, 

From the uttermost ends?

Why did they fight,

With their utmost breath?

How did they vanish,

And to what ghastly end?

Their names are remembered,

Their praises still sung.

Headstones adorn them,

Their families still grieve.

How brave and how silent,

Their graves are our church.

 

Poppy

 

Poppy, poppy

Red and drenched.

Clotted earth,

Clay and Blood

Fields of folding, quilted soil.

 

Sense

Crowds of mourners,

Rank and file.

Pilgrims worthy,

Searching for meaning.

Ode and Post,

Psalms of tribute.

Still we search,

For common sense.

 

Giving

 

Arras, Ypres

Tyne Cot, Strawberry

Messines and Polygon Wood.

Hill 60, Hellfire Corner

Menin Gate and Le Quesnoy.

Scaling walls, storming trenches

Shelter in the blast holes.

They gave their shirts,

So that we have ours.

 

Brass

 

Keys at the doorstep,

Fixed in the pavement.

Names etched in brass.

A map for the road home.

 

People

 

Ancestors, heroes

Villians and ghosts.

They were all soldiers,

They were all us.

All of them family, all of them souls

All of them human, and gone to dust.

 

 

Pou

 

Pou, tall and proud

Tribute to a nation.

Flax for the fallen,

Bullet holes in concrete.

Poppies in formation,

Lament for the dead.

 

Graves

 

Shrapnel balls, smooth and deadly,

Grenades squirming under clay.

Earth keeps churning,

Giving up graves.

 

Belgique

 

Frites and Flemish stew,

How I do love you.

Belgian beers and chocolates,

How the stomach rumbles.

Land of Flemish and a little French

Land of Freddy and Lieslot.

Full of facts, lots of laughs.

Minding bodies, chasing Geoffrey

RSA, WDC

We’re all together, en Belgique.