In the mirky half-light they gather,
where rosemary meets poppy.
The aged bend, the young stand rigid
at stone monuments across two lands.

Gallipoli’s shores, not just sand,
but a repository of bleached bones,
and rusted tags made from the
boys who sailed with adventure
in their eyes but returned in boxes,
if they returned at all.

We speak of honour while avoiding
the gangrene, the shellshock,
the echoes of screaming across a landscape.
Pride sits uneasily beside knowledge:
nineteen-year-olds drowning in their own blood.

Their censored letters hide truths
that history books might sanitise:
entrails hanging from barbed wire,
gas burning lungs from the inside out,
men shooting themselves to escape,

From this cauldron of horror,
stoked by the devils themselves,
two nations forged identity,
not in victory, it was never that,
but in surviving The Wasteland
and maybe finding another way.

The Last Post cuts shrill through morning air,
while politicians with clean hands speak
of sacrifice, and we stand in silence
contemplating contradictions.

Remember them not just in bronze and marble,
but in commitment to difficult peace.
The rotting corpses at Lone Pine,
and all the bloody fiery hells since,
demand more than wreaths and monuments.

 

25/4/2025