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 Guests Poetry
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Silent Cities
They call them Silent Cities,
These rows of standing stones,
These lines of Portland soldiers,
Which once were all our boys,
I walked these Silent Cities,
But could never be alone,
For me they were not silent,
In each I heard a noise,
A whispering, a murmuring,
What can this be I thought,
It came not to the ears,
But quietly, no fuss,
It said “You see us not, You for whom we fought, You see the stones but
Still you see not us”,
Until that one bright morn,
I looked once more and then,
As shadows grew from stones to lawn,
It was then I saw the men,
With my eyes I saw the stones,
The numbers and much more,
But in that summer’s heat,
With my mind’s eye now open,
I know now that I saw,
These men beneath my feet,
So if you should chance to visit,
A Silent City street, As you go, just say “Hello”, To the lad beneath your feet.
Mike Edwards, (1999)
Inspired by the lines of shadows cast by the headstones at a cemetery on the
Somme.
Silent Courage
The mass of graves the wood surround
Mark the hallowed, holy ground
The trees like brooding guards protect
The silent soldiers we respect.
We mourn the men who lie below,
Who gave their lives in battle to show
The honour and courage that in men lie,
When duty and their Country cry,
Though high above their souls may be
Their memory will last an eternity.
Tom Scott (2002)
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Unknown Soldier
I knelt and touched the warm, wet grass beside your cross…
and in that quiet moment
felt your hand brush mine
Time seemed to stretch and split
and there you were in front of me
The years had washed away
your pain, your tears,
the ugly wounds that
tore you from your life
There you were – clean and shining,
whole, innocent again.
A miracle of sweet remembrance
in an instant – gone
but knowing you, at last
I can let you sleep.
Unknown, no longer – not to me.
Marilyn Restione (2002)
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Three Witnesses to the "War to End All War"
1.
For Hedd Wyn
(Ellis Humphrey Evans, Welsh poet and winner
of the Bard's Chair of the Eisteddfod, 1917)
The bardic chair waits in mourning,
for the broken chorus of your verses,
once written and the prize won too late.
You never felt its sculpted symbols of poetic systems
when you went to war.
Your mind prefigured poetry you'd no time to pen,
wounded and infected by metal.
When gunfire shatters the words
that float unwritten into the ether,
nothing tangible remains but woan's tears.
Dreams dissolve and prisms of thought
splinter under boots,
trampled into trenches.
Your words lie silent on the page.
The poets who died with you cry out,
"Enough of war!" and slump disfigured
into coffins crafted with less care
by old men who never heard
of victory songs and bardic chair
for poetry. |
When You Went to War
2.
Farewell, my marching soldier,
Farewell, my beautiful boy,
I hope that you'll come back to me;
You've given me such joy.
The magic in your kisses,
The love within your arms,
Vanished into memories
When sounded war's alarms.
I know I'm not the only girl
Who has lost a love before,
And not the only girl you've loved,
There must have been many more.
I look into the future
And see myself alone,
Like all the other women
Whose lovers won't come home.
And yet I feel such sorrow,
As if it were only mine -
This seeping of Blood from my lonely heart,
The lees of a bitter wine.
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1962: My Uncle Comes to Visit
"John, John, come to the door!
A strange old man's here,
He looks like a vagrant,
ragged and poor."
"Who are you?" asks John
of the man at the door.
"I'm your brother you never knew.
I'm your oldest brother,
the one named Hugh.
I joined the Army in the First War,
was wounded and gassed,
got sent back for more.
Been on the road
for forty-four years,
walking the lanes,
sleeping in barns,
doing odd jobs for a meal or two.
"I'm so tired, got no place to go,
Shrapnel's hurting on top of my head.
I won't stay long.
I'm almost dead."
John says, "My God! My own brother Hugh.
Come in, I'll find a place for you."
John leads Hugh to the old folks' home,
but Hugh's not slept in a room before,
only in haylofts out of the storms.
He feels like he's trapped,
and one night he's gone,
back on the road seeking a farm.
The aching, the nightmares -
the heart is worn,
and in the soft earth alongside a path,
he dies from his war wounds,
a hero at last.
Jane P Morgan (2004)
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