A kestrel’s eye view of the Somme,
Hovering above the front line,
The brown fields with their tell-tale chalk marks,
a hundred years of burial and reburial,
Of neat white stones in lines
Known only unto God.

A squirrel’s eye view of the Somme,
Climbing trees at Beaumont -Hammel
Pines at different heroic angles
Craters to hide in,
Trenches that snake to a line ahead
A break in the wire and a dead tree.

A human eye view of the Somme:
Can there be such a thing?
When inconceivable numbers
don’t add up
And incompressible plans are carved
Into the landscape.
A crater like a pit
a monument so huge,
A list of names so long,
Acts of unbelievable courage.
What is human about any of this?

The human view only really strikes you
When a boy takes a football shirt or scarf,
Precious emblem of allegiance,
And in a group of trees,
At the end of a track
Uses it to remember another never met.

On our school and on our working
The help of God

(today we took part in a ceremony to remember 100 years since the Battle of the Somme at the Thiepval Memorial)