On leave from France
I saw them,
Bosses wives and daughters,
The sort that are too posh
To shit.
And every time
Some lad
Not uniformed
Goes by
They’d pounce
Waving white feathers,
Shame him to death.
A few years later
I saw then again,
Same spot,
All in black,
Selling poppies,
Squeezing out tears
For our glorious dead
One final big push…
On the days leading up to the Somme
Allied guns pound enemy trenches
(Boris declares, “Our strategy’s working”)
But the other side
Just burrow deeper,
Sit in their dugouts,
Waiting it out
(A new Covid strain has just been detected)
So on that July morning it’s
“Just a stroll across No-Man’s Land”
(Freedom Day and the Pubs are all packed)
“When I blow my whistle
Get over the top,
Hesitate and it’s a firing squad”
(the furlough’s now ending so get back to work or fend for yourself)
As each line of Tommies get within range
German machine guns punch them all flat,
One million
Are killed
Or wounded
(I don’t care if the corpses pile up)
glorious dead.
Kevin Patrick McCann
From Still Pondering https://www.amazon.co.uk/Still-Pondering-Kevin-Patrick-McCann/dp