Elegy for the Brooding Soldier (Final Revisions)

see author's note if you wish to compare with the originally conceived poem

On the verge of saintly 

Hallowed woods, the spring rows 

Of another time chimed 

Of their grievous undertakings --

When you and others 

Tramped along in solitude

Through the charnelled dust 

Of an April morning --

That season’s unseasonable 

Unreasoning of absolutism … 

Les folies exaspérantes 

D’une époque dément … 

Where so many sons were hewed 

Of soil and souls to seed 

The imperium thirst of an unsatiable clay 

For pretty beaus and ribbons --

Those cracked empires coming apart 

At the seams for want of any rational 

Thought to tomorrows torments 

For the cracked and splintered dead. 

Alone among the many 

Wind swept faces pinched 

Tight against the late ripening light, 

I follow a red kite wheeling 

Overhead through the mists 

To the tattered lines 

So long ago extinguished -- before 

The ink ever found a page to stain --

To the eternal questions … 

Whom of all the slumbering poets, 

Love’s accursed lads, should 

We mourn the most? Whose 

Untendered odes so foully 

Squandered for a malignity 

Deserve an unscorned grief 

Free of history’s lasting judgement … 

Who indeed the kite seems to cry --

Though when I strain to hear 

It’s answer, I hear nothing … 

Only the wind’s embittered laughter.

Ken e Bujold

Author's Note

First of final revisions for the new yr's collection: Girl in a Green Dress. Used the month in Singapore to whittle what will be the poems, make some notes. For the ones I consider the cornerstones I will post as new (leaving the old versions for those interested in the process) allowing a comparison of how my mind works to carve a poem from its infancy to maturation.

Reviews

[Chris Shaw]

Those cracked empires coming apart - how I travelled in history and contemplated the futility of warfare. So many lives lost. I thought in particular of ww1 and the carnage done and the war poets.So many. Some died, some survived. Many of them left their mark. In Flanders fields, a heartbreak of a poem.

Chris

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks Chris. This one has a special place in my heart. Many years ago I visited the Canadian memorial to WW! battle of Ypres in St Julien in Belgium. Taken a lot of time to truly express my thoughts but glad i finally did

[Chris Shaw]

Ken, wonderful lines you have penned here. You have crafted a memorable poem. Those memorials can certainly evoke some powerful emotions. Overwhelming on occasions when you contemplate the sacrifice.

[W. Barrett Munn]

Quite a tight revision. I believe in Liza: By Jove, I think she’s got it.

W

[John the Baptist]

Made me think of the poet Alan Seeger, slain, along with many others, at the first battle of the Somme in 1916.