PASSCHENDAELE
your name
a curse I do not
know even
how to pronounce
(so much locked
beneath where the Earth
itself got ripped away
and in
time healed, scarred over)
but still they come
in the name of a history
not quite done, a project
never to find completion
dig
in search of
a scrap, a shred,
of what was once
a life, a memory,
a name such as
enshrined on
the great vaulted ceiling
of the Menin Gate
time
time
does not heal
entirely
the sludge, the mud,
the concrete highway
the myths of green fields
Shakespearean forests
that were fought for
(when in truth
it was enclosure, factory
Tyburn Hill and
Star Chamber)
the stars suddenly like parachute shells
like fallen angels
enough light
to kill
but not
to see
how war never gets sanctified
the book that was written, its
ink may be dry but
the pages
are still bleeding
the mausoleum more out of
joint, quaint, a relic,
every passing day
in the no man’s land of
our brains
that space
for horror, such horror as this which
beggars the futility of description
never finally comprehended
nor washed away
here next to where the machine
was born, where that machine
in turn gave birth
to a new economy
a temple is rising
up out of the
selfsame Earth
(sleek and hi-tec
like a missile
ready for firing)
the god there to
be worshipped
rising from
the almost dead
from the ranks of those who
do not remember, do not
hear the ghost voices, know
their haunting poetry
let them
dismantle the monuments
use those raw materials to
pave our
new road to
Hell
it is time to demand it
its cathedral of self above
other desperate for
great vengeance
(do not
give me your
lest we ever forget)