Remembrance

The battlefields of the First World War are special places. All battle sites are potentially interesting, moving, and atmospheric, but there is something particularly so about WW1.

Many who visit these places today are moved to poetry by the experience. Somehow ordinary words are not enough to express the emotion contained in these places. A friend of mine described the Somme as “a place that is bigger than the physical space it occupies.” It is a very good description - go there and see for yourself.

The only real mistakes are the ones we learn nothing from.

Missing

(in memory of Frank Bayford MM, lost at Cherisy in May 1917)

The battlefield is empty now, so quiet and so still.
Only the skylarks song rises over the hill
Once when there was noise and chaos and death
You fell, and you lie here still

The wind breathes and sighs as I stand and stare
“Known unto God” the white stones declare
Are you still missing? Or are you found but unknown?
Do you lie here? Or there?

White clouds scurry across the blue overhead
For eternity you’ll watch them for you are missing they said
And at night the bright stars keep their vigil still
Watching over our unfound dead

MH 2002

 

 Ten Thousand Names (in memory of James Cox who is buried in Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery in Belgium with 10,000 other souls.)

Where mighty guns once roared of death
Now—the wind just whispers

Where mud and chaos wreathed the land
Now—the wind just whispers

Where lives were smashed and snatched away
Now—the wind just whispers

Between stone soldiers row upon row
Listen—the wind just whispers

Ten thousand men, ten thousand lives
Your names—the wind just whispers

MH 2001

Dick, Sam and John (my cousins, brothers, all killed in WW1 within 3 months of one another in Autumn 1916)

It's always windy here
Listen it carries your names
Touching the leaves, caressing the grass
Trying to ease the pain

Winter snows fade into spring
Summer sun warms the land
But your pain is still here
Tangible
In the brown soil cupped in my hands.

You lived, you laughed, your joy was mine
Your pain is now mine too
Kneeling by blood red poppies
I weep silent tears for you.

Soft summer rains
Soothe broken lives
Skylarks serenade you in soaring songs
From blue cathedral skies

You are at peace now
Free from the noise, the strife, the fear
Free from the horror that ended your lives
The pain and the grief you left here.

MH2007