At The Menin Gate, August 2014

Age has withered us, the decayed dregs of a degenerate century We look back through the cracked, soiled lens of history, Post war boomers, liberty bodiced and cod liver oiled through infancy Hippy geriatrics, always looking Over our shoulders half expecting a bomb We have lived through Cold Wars, brinkmanship, Aids And the insidious occupation by stealth of religious hate Towers and tyrants have toppled. Politicians continue to lie Nothing, it seems, has changed in a hundred years During the silence Two small boys play swordfights with wooden crosses A dignitary, preening her dress, is fiddling with her phone A grandfather's chest groans with a rack of medals Gnarled hands lean hard upon sticks An ice cream wobbles down a child's hand, sticky as blood. The flag at half mast, pauses like a train at a station Dare we forget? The seeds of war blew round the world yet