Little White Crosses

LITTLE WHITE CROSSES

Little white crosses, mile after mile

Stark little crosses without a smile

The sky and the soil are the colour of lead

And the poppies are red: blood-red

Little white crosses in clinging grey sod,

Most of them marked, “Known only to God.”

Mile after mile, our acres of Dead

Grow little white crosses, and poppies blood-red.

Poor little crosses without a smile

Brave little crosses, mile after mile

Each holding tight to its near little plot

And all of them saying “You forgot.”

The armies of crosses, march through the years

Enlisting more crosses, bitterness, tears

Sad little crosses, mile after mile

Stern little crosses without a smile

Under a sky the colour of lead

Smothered by poppies blood-red

All dreams, ideals, all love left to rot

By we who remember so much, and forgot

Once-a-year plastic poppies, prayers, and tears

Mean nothing at all to those miles of lost years.

We must simply decide to honour, or not

That which they died for, which we forgot

They don’t need fake flowers in Flanders’s grey sod

They’re the world’s greatest gardeners, those “Known only to God”

Growing real poppies, mile after mile

And little white crosses without a smile

If the crosses keep marching, year after year

What worth our gesture of poppy and tear?

What cost our glory? What price our smiles?

How many crosses? How many miles?

I stand by the grave of a young Irish boy;

A “Skin” from Dungannon perhaps, or the Moy:

The cross says that only God knows, do WE care

As we plant plastic poppies, and bombs, over there?

I envy his dying knowing what for

In the carnage he knew was “A war to end war.”

I am knee-high in poppies and foul Flanders’s mud,

But the stench in the air is of fresh Ulster blood.

Let us remember the mile after mile

Of little white crosses without a smile

Rain-beaten crosses over our Dead

Under skies the colour of lead.

While we remember, we must not forget

That we are spilling their blood even yet!

For “Irish,” or “Ulster” is only a name,

And shame on the one puts the other to shame

—————-

Helene Nixon, 1973