At The Menin Gate, August 2014 Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Age has withered us, the decayed dregs of a degenerate century
We look back through the cracked, soiled lens of history,
Post war boomers, liberty bodiced and cod liver oiled through infancy
Hippy geriatrics, always looking
Over our shoulders half expecting a bomb

We have lived through Cold Wars, brinkmanship, Aids
And the insidious occupation by stealth of religious hate

Towers and tyrants have toppled. Politicians continue to lie
Nothing, it seems, has changed in a hundred years

During the silence
Two small boys play swordfights with wooden crosses

A dignitary, preening her dress, is fiddling with her phone
A grandfather's chest groans with a rack of medals
Gnarled hands lean hard upon sticks

An ice cream wobbles down a child's hand, sticky as blood.
The flag at half mast, pauses like a train at a station

Dare we forget?
The seeds of war blew round the world yet