I Fell Today

I FELL TODAY I fell today As the lights over Europe dimmed To a whisper; The voices of war Slipped on the artist's palette Painting as she did Flowers of blood Upon the sky And they remembered. Swallowed by waxen candle light The tallowed flicker As a marker on horizon far Brings the boys into line Brings the boys home. Who knew, mothers of sons Who stretch the quagmill'd heresy Of humanity; The time has come they cried The time when death fills Nostrils sickened By decapitated flowers Twas where I fell... Mother, unashamedly, I cried. For you. The first bullet of conflict, Who knew? Marked with my name.... I fell today as candles extinguished To be relit around Christmas When we all troop back Across the Channel Now a peaceable sea of glass And victory is ours but... ...Mother, I fell today. I arrived this morning, This isn't how they said it would be; My light has dimmed. My heart beats no more. My body is cold in clamm'd soil And England is a mem'ry distant. I wonder, in a hundred years, Will they still remember that, I fell today? tcmoon 2014