Dying Villages (Revised Version) Poem by Panmelys

Time has stood still in this village
where young voices no longer giggle.

Dogs bark, birds chirp, streams still trickle
over mossy stone ripples.

Its church tells a tale of past splendor, some signs
remain of when bells tolled their sacred messages

Rendering Angelus across wide open fields:
calling the faithfull to kneel, and worship.

Now it awaits its final ending- steeped in pain,
wrapped in deep silence and lost dreams.

Profound sounds stretching over lifetimes, stained
in bloodshed: leaving memorials as relics.

Telling futures of men who sacrificed
lives, in two world wars: all baptized

At fount: who played as boys, worked as famers,
who fought and thought of raising families.

But few only, returned home: often maimed
folding mothers, sisters, wives in arms.

No word revealing sad fate of comrades
left dead in trenches: with their awful stares.

Nightmares of shell-shocked soldiers, who screamed their fears,
terrors of war's invisible, indelible scars.

Perched on windiest plains of France, poet sat,
surrounded by visions, whispers of the past.

Watching sons, and daughter, gath'ring wild flowers,
Bouquets to gently lay of their day's off'rings.

Upon symbolic graves of brave, eternal heroes!

Panmelys