Lay for the Day 11th
November
1918
at eleven oclock in the morning, the guns fell silent on
the Western Front.
The
Mother and the Monument
She rises up in her
night-dress
And seizing her distress
In both her hands
Goes where the great commanders statue stands.
She flings her tears beneath
the hoof.
The rider sits aloof,
His bronze ear blocked,
But by his stern green brow her griefs unlocked.
Ive laid my children
on the bow
Of your saddle; they go
Gladly to trench
And charge, to snipe and strafe, to din and stench.
Now they lie far to
south and north
And of all who went forth
None has come home
And not for one do these hands deck a tomb.
Yet you ride on, your
right arm raised,
While I below, half-crazed,
Lament my few
Of the many the world has lost through you.
Like the moan of the shrouded
earth
A foghorn from the firth
Booms its refrain
Where the dreadnought swings on its anchor chain.
The night rain pearls the
breast shes bared,
Drops from the horses flared
And decades-dead
Nostrils, sweats the furrows of that great head.
Yet here and there the stars
peep down
On the blot of her gown,
Pale on the black-
Streaked pedestal that smoke and smuts attack.
When they found her cold on
the lawn
Next day, the ray of dawn
Struck red on mount
And rider. But for this, none could account:
Where the warrior sat, a child
Now sat, wide-armed, and smiled
Adorably:
A bronze-cast, dimpled child of two or three.
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