To honour and dishonour

I think that you can honour the sacrifices of a common soldier without glorifying war. Geraldine Brooks

To grub deep in smoking waste grounds

digging soil and searching for fragments

to lay them in order so eventually I can look

at what is hidden, to try to repair what is past

 

the trampling of the horses in the morning

the riders ready for the clanging ultimate battle

the buried houses and the rickety churches

the sewers and the skeletons of rats and mice

 

it’s the holy body that I will honour in the earth

the quiet sorrow of a mother and child

their graves may behold the silent secret

left at peace with respect and love for ever.

 

© Rudi J.P. Lejaeghere

11/11/2014

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

We are a nation of cementeries. We go there to behold, in awe, sacrifice. We do not visit the graves of the widows or the orphans or the parents. We have no national cementeries for those.

[Rudi J.P. Lejaeghere]

I couldn't say it better, Delmar, glad you passed by. :)

Rudi