Remembrance: Old Soldiers at the Cenotaph
The Bath chair or the Zimmer frame,
The agèd, gnarled, claw-like hand:
Was it to this that heroes came
In England’s green and pleasant land?
Do generations give just due
To those who faced the direst foe:
The Senior Service and the Few,
The BEF of long ago?
Burma – (Blenheim, Ramillies –),
The Mons Canal, El Alamein,
The ancient wars that won the peace
Are figured in their names again;
The trenches of the Kaiser’s war,
The aerodromes at grass in Kent,
The surge of ships in seas afar,
The bagpipes in the Orient –
‘Old men forget’? No. These persist,
Though backs are bent and eyes are blear,
The best who graced the Army List
When backs were straight and eyes were clear.
Or do they wish they slept beside
Their fellows who will not grow old,
The proven true however tried,
Refined from dross and wholly gold?
Ghost-comrades in a rank and file
That reaches back past Waterloo
Fall in behind them – with a smile,
That tells the warrior’s point of view.
The long, thin, red, unbroken line
Of history and struggle shared
Makes glories that will long outshine
The simple facts our school texts blared.
And these, now spent with weight of days,
Yet stand erect in heart and thought,
And match the bovine, staring gaze
Of those who live because they fought;
These yet, as honour fades and goes,
In times made fat and dull with peace,
Enjoy the warrior’s right repose
Who paid in blood for civil ease.
Tags: poetry, remembrance
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