To The Slaughter

Beyond our sky they claimed their place
As guardians of the human race,
And with those stars they lit the night
One for each who came to fight.

With heads held high the poppies dance
Across the killing fields of France
Where selfless youngsters fought and died
Expectant futures all denied.

The blood of boys baptised this ground
Commemorations now abound,
We turn the clay in search for more
Buried in the clothes they wore.

Letters clenched in clammy hands,
Love long lost in foreign lands,
Cries of anguish, born from fear,
In layered mud long disappear.

No themes of worship for our dead
Seem worthy of the blood they shed,
Nor do our songs of praise break through
The wall of lies once sworn as true.

Not ours, but theirs, the words they spoke
Still resonate through living folk,
Echoes through their diaries told
Defy the years as they unfold.

These, our heroes, fell like slaves,
Expended bodies heaped in graves,
We traded in their flesh for bone
And sterile tributes cut in stone.

Lambs that never grew their fleece
Nor wore their medals earned for peace,
Just stirring songs recall their time
and church bells boom a plangent chime.

Now evening dulls in mellow beams
We leave them to their sky-lit dreams,
As earthbound mourners gather near;
The fox, the mouse, the silent deer.

We pray the distant sky they found
Proved kinder than this heartless ground,
Without a fleece to shun the cold
Our fallen lambs do not grow old.

© Clive Harvey