Butterworth Trench

This is an ode to English composer George Butterworth (1885=1916)

BUTTERWORTH

For one timeless moment, sanity prevails, but like shifting sands is quickly forgotten

That a man with such gifts could get a bullet 

To satisfy  ambition

He was one of those whose

Sweet reasoned tones healed and built up and gave life, 

only he held it too late.

Came a deafening rumble on the Somme.

A pounding, deadly rhythm. 

He did what every soldier does

‘desperate fighting on 4�"5 August’

‘captured key objective’ 

‘communications secured’ 

 ‘with heavy loss’

- and a bullet through a musical brain

Someone performed as well as he in what they did well

Don’t look for him now, he is lost

in the wet dirt without ceremony.  

No Ode to Munster Alley. 

All that is left

A faint trace of 'Butterworth Trench' 

and in the side of the trench, his dead chemistry remains, and all that youth and promise ground up with the torn earth. 

5th August, 1916

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

dead chemistry, no vinyl to bury...just the memory of one who made sweet music and had so much talent ahead of him to use...the pen might be mightier than the sword, but not the gun...quick, efficient and leads to that monument of memory...and mourners humming his tunes in their heads.

[John the Baptist]

This is a moving, very well worded work about a tragedy. The First Battle of the Somme was one of the great bloodbaths of WW1, the first day generally regarded a the single bloodiest day in the history of human warfare. It was still raging a month later when the subject of the poem was killed. The terseness of the official report contrasts starkly with the brilliant tribute surrounding it, highlighting the impersonal nature of the slaughter. Very well done piece.