Silence sweet and

troubling stillness thick

mark in thought

the quietening of the guns

to end the doom,

on this the 11th hour,

of the 11th day.

in the 11th month.

 

The undaunted idea of

journalist, Edward Honey,

has taken root and formed

its stillness in our souls,

and in the potent symbol

of the poppy bloom,

as we all reflect soberly

on the price of war,

in money and in lives,

and on all that lays

buried on the surface

of the stinking mud

and in the tears

of so long ago.

 

Quietly, as if on parade,

we stand with the fallen ones,

with their bodies and

with their packs and boots

and soldier’s garb,

ready for the dissolution

of the mud,

waiting for the stench

of trenches with corpses

and rats and lifeless souls.

 

And we salute them

in our meditations

about the innocence lost

and the Unknown Soldier found;

and we ask questions deep

about what led to

the slaughter grounds

of Fromelles, the Somme,

Potières, Flanders

and many more

places of scars

across the sweep of

that once luscious

and living land.

 

And we ask questions

about the thinking

that cost a generation

of men and may well haunt

our civilisation again.

 

Silence attends our

mortal respect

for those who so easily died

in body and in mind,

amongst the gas,

the shells and the machine guns

that brought them down

to the bloody ground;

and we see our lives assured

in contrast to the gamble

that was for them no bet

in living another day.

 

We remember truth in

the silence thick

with recollections

of that time,

that damned era

when beautiful young men,

afraid and bold,

never came home;

and we pledge in our hearts

we resolve in our souls,

to never contemplate

such actions again.

 

10/11/2016