Poetry

Behind the Curtains of a church
window
Men in Prayer, orchestrated by
sweat and Lice
Find relief from snipers gaze

Beside the cross sits the last
candle
Flickering precariously,
searching for sanctuary from the wind
But the wick is near the end
And so are these men
The Harvest of War is almost in
For this is November 1918.

The German guns call like the
song of the Siren
Irresistible, for only the dead
will hear
New orders to cross the
Sambre-Oise Canal
Another postcard for Historians
to write

Machine gunners scythe the ranks
Gone the Irish regiment, clover
for the beast
I take shelter behind a
splintered Oak Tree
Once magnificent, A survivor of
Natures glory
Now a hideous specter to man’s
intervention.

I wait here with Wilf my captain
Waiting for death to find me
The mud beckoning for blood,
The Canal red like the River
Sticks
A feed for tomorrows Newspaper.

A groan from wilf, his eyes start
to dim
Fear brings the Lord’s Prayer to
my lips
A last haven for my soul to cling
I watch his spirit fly away,
As the words fade from my voice

Like so many others on this day
of carnage
Wilf, my friend, died November
4th 1918

Yet another contribution to this
dark harvest,
Another soul for god to tender.
A statistic, a casualty of war,
To be remembered generically
A wreath to share with a
multitude of lost darlings,
Another photograph to fade on the
mantel piece
A piece of History for a grieving
widow to dust

In the ranks of the dead
Angels count our losses
What dreams did we lose?
What voices were made silent?
What books were never written?
And how many tomorrows gone,
All lost in the darkness of death?

Under this oak tree, fading from
memory
A soldier Wilfred Owen was taken
too
Unspoken truth in unspoken poems
Silent to mortal’s ear
Another casualty of war
A feast of wisdom for angels to
keep?

For His words were far too much
For the hogs of war to stomach.
His poetry made silent by
country’s shame,

Unpatriotic, not cricket old bean
said the generals
Only now, through peace can we
learn
The voice of one soldier,

How I pity humanity
For silence is a killer
Democracy, and justice its
victim,
And the inevitable Silence of war
will kill us all.

Footnote
Wilfred Owen killed in action, Sambre-Oise Canal,
killed 4th November 1918, seven days from Sanity
One of England’s Finest War Poets.