One Poem by Jack D. Harvey

 

                Langemarck 

          

               A World War I battle in Belgium. 

 

Lying on the ground, 

the dead at Langemarck 

tell lies  

long and bitter 

 

tell of  

lost sacrifice, 

future glory; 

dark and cold, 

young field-grey regiments, 

"holy grey rows," 

broken hawks lying 

on the broken ground 

 

tell tales                  

long and bitter; 

the guns that 

mowed them down 

amid the broken stumps, 

the blunted trunks of trees 

 

cold and silent. 

 

The wind blows  

on the blood and the corpses, 

blows through the eternal cemeteries, 

the hallowed memorial hall, 

keeping count of the fallen,  

the good cause, the bad generals,  

rank by rank, 

faithful and innocent boys, 

hardened soldiers creep  

in the silent fog; 

 

the wind blows, 

leaving them all 

dead as stones. 

 

We feign reluctance, 

loose the doves of peace 

and go to war anyway,  

sweep consequences  

under the rug and 

across murderous fields of fire 

run like maniacs, 

soiling ourselves, 

terrified and 

whistling the thin 

whistle of death; 

 

run like lunatics  

while vicious and efficient,  

the machine guns 

ring in our ears, 

quick delicate, 

the bullets zipping, 

the cartridges clinking 

on gun carriages 

like holiday bells. 

 

Among trundling tanks  

and nosing artillery, 

regiments, battalions, 

slaughtered like poultry 

and the singing, so they  

say, the singing of  

the Deutschland song, 

silly as Mother Goose, 

presents the public face 

of Flanders' castle of the fallen; 

the faces  

not forgotten, never lost; 

the singing boys, 

the marching dead, 

go on and on, 

howling like wolves, 

over the uncaring ground. 

 

Langemarck, Langemarck, 

who cares about your old battle, 

tortured away and 

misrepresented here? 

Painted whore of  

a landscape that never was. 

 

Who cares to speak  

at the cost of speech 

the worn-out truth or 

tell a few more lies?  

Guild or corrupt  

the graceful and sensible lily? 

 

At Langemarck's start 

the living bodies lay and 

trembled on the earth, 

pressing down hard;   

poisonous gas and   

torpid mud drowned out 

the noise of guns 

until all was drowned in death. 

 

Listen, listen, 

you can hear death's 

clear clarion in the  

report from the High  

Command;  

what was said   

no more a lie  

than the cost of  

battle, the devotion  

to bits of dead bodies; 

 

these dead at Langemarck  

left living love and life 

to the women and children; 

 

let them lie.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. 

The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York.