Seemingly so peaceful a place

with birdsong, birches, and smooth green lawns

verdant with the lake of tears past shed.

But what agonizing long gone secrets

lie hidden below those ramrod white stones?

Lonely deaths in a field, under a hedge, along a dusty road,

seeking animal-like a quiet hidden place undisturbed

to draw that now welcome last breath.

 

So young, so many lives unlived,

seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, rarely over 30.

Pilot, radio operator, gunner

shot down in their silver bird high overhead.

From the heathered moors of Northern Highlands

with skirling pipes, St. Andrew's Crosses, Stag's Heads,

or Kukri wielding, tough wiry goldskinned men

from the eternal snows of Deodar heights.

From Waltzing Matilda lands and Kiwi haunts,

from frozen icebound Scarlet maple nation.

Elegant bloodcoated Guardsmen, Punjabis, Marathas,

a once romantic Skinner's Horseman from crinoline times.

A Russian Commissar sent to organize Resistance

in hope of future sinister developments.

Six pointed star of a 'future composer' mourned as such by family,

another young Mozart's life cut short, perhaps?

 

How many different Gods urgently, despairingly invoked,

implored for a final, merciful end to suffering,

in the filthy, stinking,clinging mud and blood

spread in the once lovely, greygreen, sunlit olive groves?