Remembrance - Elegy by Graves

Dulce et decorum est...memento mori

...Lips parted in silent suffering syllables,
His mute monologue mounting evidence of imminent mortality...
Death had already robbed him of his voice,
Leaving those of us who remained watching, waiting,
Nothing.
For the grave had claimed him, claimed us all,
Graves of our own digging,
And with each brave heart's last beat,
The pounding from without would grow.

...Ay, earth-shattering crescendos I recall,
And grim-grinning gargoyles strewn twixt their lines and ours,
Sewn rank and serial 'cross the furrowed fields of battle,
Fields where the glutted Reaper lingers still.

The oddly honoured authors of that nightmare tapestry are no more,
And we few tattered unused-up remnants all that endure of their gory tableau.
How well the sickly-sweet insidious blood-red charnel-flowers bring to mind
The sight and smell of a three day old battle.