this ground

Following several days of quiet rain
the grassy cover gleamed in the lowering light.
The newly cloudless sky glowed incandescent blue.
Silhouettes of stone and iron stretched
their darkened angles toward the East.
War had long been silent. But an unexpected
sadness disturbed and awakened the memory...

Unwilling to be numbered as brothers
they courted differing equalities.
The nation became soiled with unforgiveness.
And they were divided as garments on wash day.

Their battered feet struggled to reach the Altar of Freedom.
As they fell there they never smelled the aroma of
its incense. Only the piercing stench of battle.
They never sensed the smoothness of its stone. Only
the ripping and shredding of flesh.
They never heard the words repeated from the Book.
Only the dying young bleating for their mothers.

Though their life blood, poured out
and sprinkled, hallows these fields,
though their honor and glory hover here in triumph,
mercy and truth refuse to be buried alongside them.


c 2000 B Philp