Vimy Ridge

I wrote this poem in 2010's Summer as a response to a college trip to the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge. The whole trip was amazing and changed my whole persepective on the First World War. If anyone get's the chance to travel to Belgium and see the war memorial's and graveyards, I highly recommend it.


Marching.
The soldiers’ feet pounding
Through the catacomb of Tunnels,
Marching in the shared land
Of their comrades’ graves.

And for six and thirty hours
They wait. Tin soldiers, tall and stiff
Waiting underground to march
Through all that white
That cold, that snow.
It rains on them like confetti,
Pouring from God’s hand.

The Fritz is there-
Do they scream as they fall?

And the fallen do not
See the sandbags piled in
Broken ground. They run along
Like mice.
Like the rats that creep alongside them.

And the sounds!
What could not be heard, is loud
The sound of death, and yet…
The sound of birds, singing.

The beaks dusted with snow,
Flying out of death’s hands into a
Dying tree.

It is still white in Vimy Ridge.
That immense headstone,
That all of France and all of
Canada can see.
The names that stretch across
Pass on the torch to their brothers
And in past and future,
Canada is still weeping
For her lost sons.