Midnight Cenotaph
Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 3:07 pm
Midnight Cenotaph.
A cenotaph, that could well be, in any Australian town,
Beckoned me on midnights crown: by a symbolic flame that burned within
And there the hair raised on my skin
As next to me so grave and thin
Stood an old digger of rigid chin, sad eye and wistful frown.
He spoke then in a voice of soul, to ‘never glorify war!’
Those words of cognition raw: there spoken aural borne as to evoke
A stream of solemn tears that choke
As if war victims blood did soak
All his memories! silently bespoke, of horrors that he saw!
His words transfixed as then he told, how too much Hollywood
Had misplaced, misunderstood: the legacy of wars affliction decreed
As truth would never dare impede
The hero’s win at record speed
Who atop would stand for dollars greed; silent graves of the good!
And those survived of broken mind, and spirit not intact
Shake their heads of brazen act: to wonder wherefore is honours demand,
And why documentaries planned
Of rehabs. maimed and burned, were banned
And the traumatised all classed offhand, by those who would detract!
Don’t tarnish, don’t commercialise the ultimate sacrifice!
Was his message, his advice: as, is not the wont of powers that be,
For damage done to what degree
To the regs. or naive draftee
They do not account, instead foresee, as numbers to suffice!
He vanished then, in silent flight, an apparition I had seen,
Who rejoined in spectral scene: the ghosts of ranks assembled, thousands strong
Whose flesh and blood did once belong
Upon this earth until the wrong
Of wars vile and tuneless sullen song, did humanity demean!
© Ron Boughton
Oct. ‘14
A cenotaph, that could well be, in any Australian town,
Beckoned me on midnights crown: by a symbolic flame that burned within
And there the hair raised on my skin
As next to me so grave and thin
Stood an old digger of rigid chin, sad eye and wistful frown.
He spoke then in a voice of soul, to ‘never glorify war!’
Those words of cognition raw: there spoken aural borne as to evoke
A stream of solemn tears that choke
As if war victims blood did soak
All his memories! silently bespoke, of horrors that he saw!
His words transfixed as then he told, how too much Hollywood
Had misplaced, misunderstood: the legacy of wars affliction decreed
As truth would never dare impede
The hero’s win at record speed
Who atop would stand for dollars greed; silent graves of the good!
And those survived of broken mind, and spirit not intact
Shake their heads of brazen act: to wonder wherefore is honours demand,
And why documentaries planned
Of rehabs. maimed and burned, were banned
And the traumatised all classed offhand, by those who would detract!
Don’t tarnish, don’t commercialise the ultimate sacrifice!
Was his message, his advice: as, is not the wont of powers that be,
For damage done to what degree
To the regs. or naive draftee
They do not account, instead foresee, as numbers to suffice!
He vanished then, in silent flight, an apparition I had seen,
Who rejoined in spectral scene: the ghosts of ranks assembled, thousands strong
Whose flesh and blood did once belong
Upon this earth until the wrong
Of wars vile and tuneless sullen song, did humanity demean!
© Ron Boughton
Oct. ‘14
