Age has withered us, the decayed dregs of a degenerate century <br />We look back through the cracked, soiled lens of history, <br />Post war boomers, liberty bodiced and cod liver oiled through infancy <br />Hippy geriatrics, always looking <br />Over our shoulders half expecting a bomb <br /> <br />We have lived through Cold Wars, brinkmanship, Aids <br />And the insidious occupation by stealth of religious hate <br /> <br />Towers and tyrants have toppled. Politicians continue to lie <br />Nothing, it seems, has changed in a hundred years <br /> <br />During the silence <br />Two small boys play swordfights with wooden crosses <br /> <br />A dignitary, preening her dress, is fiddling with her phone <br />A grandfather's chest groans with a rack of medals <br />Gnarled hands lean hard upon sticks <br /> <br />An ice cream wobbles down a child's hand, sticky as blood. <br />The flag at half mast, pauses like a train at a station <br /> <br />Dare we forget? <br />The seeds of war blew round the world yet<br /><br />sheena blackhall<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-the-menin-gate-august-2014/
