"The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time" British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey.
Old Royal Enfield bicycles
propped against the wall,
a gaggle of men,
then, in the far distance,
a gable end
and look! a house
windows left wide open
in this Cheshire heat.
And, have we forgotten,
if we knew at all,
this art devoid
of rhetoric or name?
For in this humid heat
their necks are sticky
their collars starched and neat.
John,
It is so hard to imagine that such a summer was the prelude to the most ghastly carnage imagineable. I remember as a boy knowing men who had returned from that war. One in particular had the most awful cough which I attributed to smoking but in fact was a result of mustard gas poisoning on the Somme.
Thank you for this comparison and reminder of those heroic men and women
Keith
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John Marks
Thu 3rd Oct 2019 20:33
My sincere thanks to you Kevin. Thank YOU so much for noticing. I tried to use this little scene to convey a whole mood. Not very successfully I fear. Conveyed best, I think, by a deeply unfashionable (because deeply un-pc) yet quite brilliant poet, Philip Larkin, a man with vices as well as virtues, now isn't that a surprise?
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
Has changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
My grandfather served for four years on the western front as a machine gunner in the Cheshire Regiment, long since 'cut' by one or other of our oh-so 'patriotic' governments.
His name was Jack, a silent breed of a man, I loved him dearly. John