We go to the Battlefields in Autumn
When the leaves are falling,
Piling up in drifts,
Squashed onto stones.
Red, orange, yellow;
Dull down to brown as we advance.
Imagine if we went in summer:
How the earth would be baked and cracked,
How the grass would be waving, high,
Scattered with blue and red;
The poppy and the cornflower
Side by side.
As for spring: what if it was spring?
Time of new growth and promise:
Ideal season for an offensive.
Maybe there would be blossom,
Or bulbs bursting like shells
On a gradually greening landscape.
What about winter, the bare time:
Frost on boughs and grass and stones.
Even snow covering the ditches and mounds,
Berries bleeding blood red through the white.
Bones still rattling in the graves.
But every year we make this pilgrimage
In Autumn, colourful season
Of variety and fruitfulness
And we remember the name soaked ground
And how a generation was swallowed up
To wait the final trumpet
And the last call.
In our coming and our going
The Peace of God.
