dusk arising

worth repeating

 

smiling young faces
sixteen summers seen
lives full of promise
now eager to please
\"just turned eighteen sir\"
earns infantry green
runaway schoolboy
for country and king

rifles and bayonets
shell holes and mud
barbed wire and trenches
young brothers of blood
landscape of corpses
the shells tear apart
counting lost friendships
fear in his heart

springtime in Wiltshire
blackbird sings to the night
staring to heaven
prays he\'s alright
clutching the letter
from runaway son
somewhere in Belgium
he longs for his mom

fields full of gravestones
all races and creeds
sacrificed lifes, now
planted like seeds
\"your country needs you\"
each nation took heed
and died on the wire
that we may be free

november morning
two thousand eighteen
a hundred years mourned
on the old village green
names carved in granite
their faces unseen
lest we ever forget them
or that bloody regime

all war is obscene