Where now is the glory?

Kent 2014 - Where now is the glory?    

There is a green place high on the cliff above 

the menacing Goodwins and the sheltering Downs,

a log cabined park, clipped and trim,

but which has still the wild touch

as pale green wild liquorice spreads around

the gardener’s stately hollyhock,

while pungent wild garlic and narrow leaves

of meadow sage line the banks

of a stream which sings softly as it meanders

relaxed through the quiet wood.

There is a copse near the wood’s edge,

which encloses a ragged circle of bright space 

where the morning sun gilds a clump

of late primroses and bathes the flowers

of the tall cow parsley with a dappled radiance.

In the centre of this oasis of light grows

a spear thistle, three feet high, elegant 

in its new budding touched with Tyrian purple 

and long leaves tipped with vicious spines,

a formidable green emperor preparing for war.

Along these same quiet coastal paths, in these same woods

 a hundred years ago through the hot summer of 1914 

came men to survey, to plan, to dig, to build.

Where now the wild liquorice grows, 

are mounds and hollows, slabs of dressed stone.

Was there here a shelter, a trench, 

an emplacement for a gun?

Did the gallant men of the 6th Cyclist Battalion

with rifles and ammunition slung across their backs

patrol these sweet green places?

Stand today beside the handsome barbed warrior, 

turn to the North and let your imagination

listen to the stuttering rattle of a rotary engine,

a limping Sopwith Camel coming into land.

Turn to the South and feel through every part of you

the unceasing shudder of the guns 

merciless bombardment of the green fields 

of France, where the bloodstained earth  turns red, 

and the land itself cries out ‘Here is no glory,

 these are the Plains of Death.’

From the corners of the world they came 

and from this village too, among them

boys too young and men too old to contend 

with the pain, the loss, the mud and the over arching fear. 

In the trenches there was courage and a bleak humour,

compassion and care for the wounded and the weak,

but in No Man’s Land men abandoned, crucified

on the wire, screamed throughout the night,

and in the grey morning dead eyes 

silently yearned for the green fields of Kent. 

Little was gained from four bitter years of battle,

seven million civilians and ten million fighting men died,

twenty million wounded took home little but their wounds.

Widows made destitute pawned their wedding rings 

while crippled soldiers begged in our city streets, 

and the sad hungry orphans of Germany

wept for fathers never returned.

What is there now to celebrate when both victim

and victor were the casualties of this war,

except perhaps its eventual ending?

Very little to glorify, but much to remember,

to respect, to regret, and to learn.