It is Sweet and Right

Bent double and stiff necked on bikes we ride,

Locked knees, through quiet France, the engine roars

Shattering a peace that hides how you died

In battle to cross the Sambre-Oise canal at Ors.                        

Drafted when wars could be won or lost,

Lives exploded by bullet, shell and gas.

Human being an affordable cost

As seventeen million fell en masse

A time when a battlefield was just that -

Now the subway, plane, mall, or twin tower,

As civilians and history, laid flat,

Are collateral damage of power.

Killed in the great war to end all wars

It didn’t work - when do wars ever do?

Devastating young lives of army corps

Khaki and grey stained by blood’s crimson hue.

You gave not just your life but also truth -

The Send Off of those who die as cattle,

Exposing the Anthem for Doomed Youth -

What it means to die and live in battle.   

There’s no signpost to your weathered grave

Strangely among the more recent natural dead.

Secret rest, like wrongs hushed up, for the brave.

Simple fading inscription to be read.

Aware at your grave, bathed in sunlight,

How brave you were to expose, last century,

The old lie: It is sweet and right

to die for your country.

© David Hardman 2015