For Harry Patch and his friends

The Old Soldier

The string of history snaps with a heartbeat
casting the mud and grime of your sacrifice
away to join that of generations before.
Although you were a survivor, an old man
at the end, your kindly eyes still show that you
too sacrificed much. Too much.

Not dulled with the misty passing of time
but blazing with the fierce, sharp, sad memories
of friends torn apart, poisoned and broken,
The stench of the rat-scurried trench, the cries
of the wounded, the grey bird-less sky
and everywhere mud... mud...mud.

Your memories seeped back through the
mud and the blood of Passchendaele, and your eyes
told us more than any Owen poem or history book.
Through them your pain and humanity blazed
like the guns on the Western front. Through them
you remembered friend and foe as we now remember you.



Copyright D. Findlay 2009