Poetry Pleases: Flanders Field
In this eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year - the appointed time to remember the victims of too many wars - Vera Sanderson's heart-felt poem demands that we should never forget those who gave their lives so that we might live.
I wonder if, on starless nights
When thunderous storms bombard the sky,
An endless stream of khaki men
Go marching by?
Down the long and winding trail
Back to the Somme and Passchendaele,
Back to the mud-drenched trenches
Where they fell,
Marching, marching, marching,
Back to the mouth of Hell!
Softly singing soldiers’ songs
As the gods of war look down,
“Take me back to dear old Blighty,
Put me on the train for London Town.”
A Scottish piper wails a sad refrain,
“Laddie, will ye no come back again?”
Or is it the cries of the dying
Drifting on the dark night air,
Lying in their shell-holes,
Drowning in despair?
They drilled them, trained them
Fighting fit
To perish in the devil’s pit.
“Lions led by donkeys,” went the cry
At the high command who sent them there to die.
Still in Flanders field they lie,
At rest for all eternity.
And in the misty verdant spring
Above their heads the skylarks sing.
The seasons turn - again, again.
The summer sun, the autumn rain.
The leaves make covers for their bed,
Our long-lost legions of the dead.
Now where the blood-red poppies grow
Their graves are ghosted white with snow.
Hark! Hear the Last Post bugle blow.
Remember them!
