A Collection of Poems - 1. Novembers

NOVEMBERS

There is something about
your scattered remains
sweet great great uncle of mine
which burst into my mind
I remember reading about you
I had just turned thirteen
This silly way you died
blown into pieces
by a bombshell
far away
so far away from the front line
somewhere near Verdun
It is ironical
it could have been fiction yet
it was world war one

A mere coincidence
you were not much older than
those nice youths tonight
who're dancing by my side
My mind is set on you and your
countless comrades in arms
who followed the same
fate
Merry and gay
when it all got started
We're gonna teach them jerries a lesson
A flower stuck in your gun's barrel
And all these clichés that I was taught in school
But yet I know nothing about you
what you thought when it turned out different
Slimy mud sticky blood
These were the trenches
Lice, dirt and anguish
and soldiers in ambush
at grenade launching range
Did you think about your wife realize
she'd never bear your children?

I would be among the oldest
if it took place just now
Thanks for the sacrifice
But I'm much better off in the soft sweet
sweat of syncopated dance
There's no point to be made
I've got these memories
of you of me
of the fields I drove through
many times
just mud sugar beets potatoes
no honor
and I wondered
what it could have been like

A litany of names
carved into white limestone
in Beaumont-Hamel
and the long ranks of crosses
set for those nice Christians
which we saw
at dusk in the fog
All which remains from
boys who had come from
all over the world
to get killed
Bombshells shrapnel mustard-gases
And then you did blow up
You'd have been better off
letting your mind get
blown into pieces
by the frantic beat
syncopated dance