Autumn

There’ll be no harvest come August,

Bugles called the yeomen

To work other fields,

At the hiring fair

Boys and men, ashen faced;

Go to a new service,

Next spring, the fields

Will lie fallow;

The plough stand idle.

There’ll be no harvest come August

The hearty farm lads,

Strong as oaks; simple as beasts

Are reaped like corn.

Greens in silent villages

Grow poppies watered

By what didn’t happen,

The lives sawn off half way

Their space filled with silence,

Washing out from one day

A bitter store of tears

Laid down by the hungry years

March 2014.