Remembrance




		Email: fourbears.research@tiscali.co.uk

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)

Its 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


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