One Hundred Years On

 

One hundred years on

Since that Declaration of War

 In scope and effect 

Greater than any gone before.

Massed gravestones

Pristine ranks of white 

In their serried tidy files

A truly humbling sight;

 

A constant reminder

For those who want to see

The price they paid for 

Peoples' continuing liberty. 

The flags will fly at half mast

And the crocodiles tears shed

And all the world's current leaders 

Stand with bared and bowed head,

 

But would they then 

With a stroke of pen

Send our troops

Off to war again.

No lessons learned

From millions that died

Patriotic martyrs

From both sides.

 

There are no survivors now 

To tell the horrors they faced,

To tell first hand of 

The carnage and the waste,

No more tales over pints 

From pub snug room benches

Just the words of the poets

Written from the trenches.

 

 

Leaders once 

Led their men

Now they command

By stroke of pen,

Ypres, Oppy Wood, 

The Somme 

Names remembered still

One hundred years on.