A Memory - by
There was no sound at all, no crying in the village,
/ Nothing you would count as sound, that is, after the…
trauma
Dulce Et Decorum Est - by
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The…
Any Private to Any Private - by
Ay, gie’s ma rum. I’m needin’t sair, by God!
/ We’ve juist been bringin’ Wullie doun the line –…
War - by
The songs I’ve sung are futile,
/ Of little futile things,
/ Of foolish dreams and fancies
/ On feeble faltering wings;
/ So I will cease my…
On Revisiting the Somme - by
If I were but a Journalist,
/ And had a heading every day
/ In double-column caps, I wist
/ I, too, could make it…
Women Demobilised - by
July 1919
/
/ Now we must go back again to the world
/ Full of grey ghosts and voices of men dying,
/ And in the…
Last Bus Ride in July – a Mother Speaks (Genocide – Srebrenica, July, 1995; Karadzic captured – Belgrade, July, 2008) - by
Summer grass is shoulder high once more, / higher than my sons will ever be.
The Soldier’s Wife - by
My warrior comes from France to-night
/ And I, so long disconsolate,
/ Once more the well-beloved of Fate,
/ With work-scarred hands go quick to…
From the Line - by
Have you seen men come from the Line,
/ Tottering, doddering, as if bad wine
/ Had drugged their very souls;
/ Their…
Ghosts of War - by
When you and I are buried
/ With grasses over head,
/ The memory of our fights will stand
/ Above this bare and tortured land,
/ We…
The Volunteer - by
I took my heart from the fire of love,
/ Molten and warm not yet shaped clear,
/ And tempered…
The Permanence of the Young Men - by
No man outlives the grief of war
/ Though he outlive its wreck:
/ Upon the memory a scar
/ Through all his years will ache.
/
/ Hopes…