POETRY

OutNumbered

The British Empire suffered approximately 900,000 military fatalities during WWI (1914–18) and 380,000 during WWII (1939–45)

Photo by Stijn Swinnen on Unsplash

We can no longer gather the brightest of England’s strands together, too many were lost in wars. We cannot compensate these young men, dead before their time; their genes lost their bravery and their stoicism no longer passed down to future generations. We, descendants of the cowards and the conchies and the lucky slink again into ordinary life, we do not forget. Stripped of all the dead might have offered there is iron in my soul, an obscene reminder of those lost boys who shall never grow old or so I was, once upon a time, told.

Now, I look into the west at the bloody skies Of sunset, of these remnants of our childhood home, how heavily hope dies within me and I remember you: my father, and you, my grandfather. Past touch and sight and sound Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day. [AE Housman}

Later, death took from me my son, my brother, and I was broken for many, many years. I can no longer hide this from myself, behind this screen of anonymity: I have stood in empty spaces, walked along the winter beach stripped of everything except wind and sand and sea. And me, I have looked into the summer sky for your blue-blue eye; but all, all I see, repeatedly, are grey-clouds a-skimming blank looks. If you could only see into my blue-blue eye you would not sigh, nor pass me by, so blithely.

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