Marble Harvest

Marble Harvest

For the rank and file beneath white bleached stones
Laid in parallel lines above broken bones
Life’s fruits and dreams dark death denies,
Scything a white harvest from their despairing cries.

From across the sea they came to kneel
Upon this cloy earth their wounds to heal.
Written in faces washed by tears
Are bleak farewells, lost hopes and fears.

For such sacrifice of unimaginable enormity
They stone-carved here in cold, sterile uniformity.
I wonder at the end of this dark grey day
Can death to stop death ever sweep evil away?