Armistice

My Saturday poem this year reflects on the ending of the Great War, this Sunday, one hundred years ago, and the human cost.

Armistice

All is quiet, all is calm, all at peace. It is over.
Troop ships sail to White Cliffs of Dover;
And on the minute, on the hour, on the day,
There will be an ending today, so they say;
Battle weary, fatigued, it is time to rest :
Remember the dead, those we now blessed ;
Broken bones, broken bodies, broken minds,
Lungs diseased, broken by the gas that blinds;
Empty villages, up and down in every land :
Memorial services wearing a black armband ;
The cold wind blew, the gale force came:
So many lives lost, so many death did claim;
Like leaves falling from trees, one by one,
Falling beneath the bullets of machine gun;
They never grew old, they fought and died:
In grief widows weep, in grief they abide ;
November was bleak in nineteen eighteen,
With fragments of people, missing, unseen;
An unknown soldier, as so many unshriven,
But resentments remained, yet unforgiven;
The seeds of war were sown in the peace:
War comes once more, war does not cease.
Always for young men, not generals with maps:
And can there be peace, a final perhaps?
Who can see, who can tell, in winter’s cold chill,
And after the war, when so many fell ill?
War torn and weary, and prey to disease:
Gale force comes from the mildest of breeze;
So we stand, and we wait, in wind and in rain,
And we pray, and we pray, that never again
Will there be death and glory, war ever more;
The white cliffs of Dover, and reaching the shore,
Limbs lost, maimed, mutilated, those that survived ,
And coffins arrive, of the dead, of the shrived,
Blown up in a landmine, or killed by a gun,
Wives lost their husbands, and parents a son;
Remember them all, remember the grief,
Remember the lives, so short and so brief;
Lay down the wreath, as they laid down their life,.
And pray for a better world, and one without strife.