Singly And By Multitude The Poppies Come

[Monday, 10th November 2014 – at the Tower of London]

On finding you
Standing proud
A single, scarlet poppy
Quite ceramic
Not waving
At the loving crowd
Who come but tenderly
In droves, remembering
With inward tears
Lost youth
The splintered age
Still jabbing accusation
At such monstrous waste
Of precious souls.

Today through misty rain
We shuffled by
In dense, wet thousands
With shallow smiles
For those close to
Yet cut and severed
In a sorrow borne
Across this century
Of flinty years
Redeeming us
By thoughts for those
Shaped quite like flowers
Yet sightless
As our shattered boys.

The stricken, weeping Tower
With seeping wound
Spills rushing blood
Below us
That does an ocean make
Of our most fearful loss
And searing pity
Transforming now
This sea of bloody red
To come alive
And make these lads
Spring boyishly
From lifeless form
To vivid, glorious life.