Passchendaele (RE-POST)
Passchendaele
[Here's a poem I originally blogged in 2014 with a link to the audio I produced for it on Soundcloud - it is a collection of 8 haikus]
https://soundcloud.com/the-man-at-the-back-1/passchendaele
Blind, wide open, eyes.
Dripping poppy petal tears.
Crimson rivers flow.
Fields transformed to mud.
Deep cut trenches scar the earth.
Wounds that will not heal.
Gas clouds drift from hell.
Death exhaled in fetid breath.
Lost boys fall like flies.
Ghosts haunt no mans land
searching for their bitter souls
in butchered bodies.
Finding empty shells,
cold bullet riddled corpses.
Nameless and broken.
First light cracks the dark
Holy, holy Seraphim
burn the battlefield.
No place for God here.
Just the stench of charnel house
and false politics.
Loss of Innocence
on Golgotha’s barbaric
ridge at Passchendaele.
<Deleted User> (18118)
Sun 17th Sep 2017 12:09
I am glad I found this poem. An important subject. I saw the coverage of the anniversary on TV and people were taking flowers for great, great, great 'uncles'. Not many great grandfathers and I realised that the soldiers who died were too young to have become fathers themselves. That is very sad.