ON THE NIGHT BEFORE


On the night before
the boys from farms and mines
uneasy now were calmed
by one of their own
who stood on a rise and
sang their hymns
to them so they forgot
dismemberments they’d seen,
remembered what
they should believe,
that life was sacred,
everlasting and
a hero’s death
was quick and clean.

And how should we feel
now we know
they do not sleep
beneath the watered turf,
and that their mothers
who chose their epitaphs
far away at home
never did meet them
in a better place?

These stones say
we are gone
and until everyone
is blind or dead
like us our
vanishing
can be read.



                                                              Portianou Military Cemetery,
                                                              Lemnos, (near Gallipolli).