The Murder of Crows

In the West nothing New

All is quiet on the western front.
I see that poppies have grown
Again, amongst green boroughs,
Roads have driven themselves over the soil.
Civilisation has come to reclaim
What civilisation failed.

All is quiet on the western front.
Larks play on the wind,
The trees that mark the fields
Cast their branches like fishermen.
Their frayed grey wires draws thin lines;
In between are where the brave men lie.
In twenty years' time they'll find themselves
Some new faces to join their ranks.
Who knows what stories these men will share, knowing
After twenty years' time still they say:
"All is quiet on the western front."

All is quiet on the western front.
The earth's sun baked,
A sea-breeze blows,
On the beach heads nothing grows.
Trenches mark the sand,
Like the lines of busy ants,
Or the ivy's creeping vines.
Shell holes grow, from red cliff sides,
Atop lives still the bunker hills.
Dreaming minds lie here, squandered. By those
Who will never see a poppy grow.

All is quiet on the western front,
Now that I am here to see the marble marking ceremonial sites,
Scarce there's still the shrill of shells that flies by, on a distant sky.
Some hundred years ago there must've been sent this message,
Though unremarkable, in telegram,
"All is quiet on the western front",
When that shell in my mind passed by
The head of a poor messenger, too used to the fright.
And the dirt that was thrown up, and a crater new made.
I can scarce imagine the image of that distant place, when all that lived
To tell the tale of that day have passed by.

Scarce in my mind is the day, when the first rounds were shot
And lost children went over the top, as if charmed by some bloody faery,
To find themselves in a new world they've been lied to about.
No Christmas will come for them, they'll soon realise
When a young lad from some rural town,
Find the mercy of artillery their new God.

Before me is a well recorded place, of songs and poems and
Prose by men whom have seen this image that exists to me
only an image from a distant sky.
They've taught me their lessons from written words.
"Lest we forget", I may cry with them, "And never again!"
But their words cannot bring me,
To that distant sky, where poppy buds were nipped when green.

I now must imagine myself amongst these dead men, see their torn forms of limb and bone,
Mere approximation of a human's shade;
I now must imagine myself in their place, having been robbed of thirty years of life, having thought
Of a past life that's gone by;
Scarce can I imagine that I must say to them, that in twenty years' time they'll say again:
"All is quiet on the Western Front."