Remembrance

I'll live with poets not with God,
For they have lived and felt in
ways he never could.
All his creation and what of that?
All sides knew him and all
sides fed on beliefs of his salvation:
And what then?

The clamouring of haste at the bugle call?
Is this His stupid beckoning?
Or is it - as he says - with much
gesturing form the pulpit -
Our human failing to understand the
book, the word, the bits of insincerity?

I have stood by graves of children;
Noted the words of grief;
seen the white slabs on slabs,
Row on row.
Have knelt in wonder
at Poelkappelle
And seen those torn from life and being
Without even a name to take them.

How can I sit in cool chapels
lit through glass bearing sacrifice
and see it all as one?

I'll live with poets for they have lived and know.