Beneath French Farms
written by: Nobby66
@douglas97_s
Beneath French farms
stiff oaks under blankets, grey
unfold,
reclaimed by old Madame, staring,
cold.
Bold, bare veins sway in Winter’s blow,
slicing through heads, snare falling snow,
flaked layers rest on wilt leaded crops.
Grown where mown hearts ceased to beat,
bloodied Summer blooms now shoot
above stilled feet,
beneath French farms.
In the same bloody mud… lost last March,
march scared witless, wilting privates,
shell-shocked,
soiled and scarred.
Bayonets, keen as mustard smog, up to dank knees in putrid bogs,
silhouetted phantoms, the eternal guard.
‘Fall out!’
Ruby lipped Mademoiselles wait
to bathe the privates’ soiled privates…
Not today…
Today the RSM’s bark booms orders through the fog –
‘Fall in!’
Must go again… the whistle peeps
and again
and again
to gain that yard…
No captain to lead, his voice-box withered, charred…
by bomb shard lead.
He fell dead
on steep clay,
last sneering words…
‘Tosh to the Bosch!’
Now moulded
in the same bloody mud they lost that March.
Still, mithered men, stand to, en guarde…
old wounds scratched by the plough of Jean Claude.
Unearthed pocket book,
leather crinkled, worm worn,
sepia snapped sweetheart, faded and torn.
No Spring Somme sun or skylark’s song
can drown whispering English tongues,
swollen, blistered lips,
green-gassed gills,
of fathers, husbands,
brothers, beaus and sons, who
lie stiff …where they fell,
shoulder to shoulder,
still talking over the village cemetery bell,
still talking of squeezes and teases, from lasses with cleavage,
still talking
of warm welcome arms, cold pints, beef barms…
of the day of returning
from beneath French farms.
Reside in the Dark Kingdom of Lancashire, England.
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