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published
in Hidden Histories, University of Exeter, 2008;
and,
Essential Journey, Bardic Media Ltd, 2009.
ISBN
978-0-9550605-5-7
The Pity Of It
Suggested
by a 1915 Thomas Hardy poem of the same title
The
spring sun speckles the grass
in
a dell of wintry trees.
It
could be anywhere in Europe.
It
is Dorset. Smoke
from
Thomas Hardy’s wood-edge cottage
drifts
beyond the beech trees.
It
is Belgium. At Langemark
the
sun-specks light the names
on
flat black marble slabs.
German
infantry lie sixteen deep,
cut
down. Bare branches shield them.
The
four dark watchers brood.
It
is where our stories take us;
where
Sigurd slew the dragon,
licked
his blood-bespattered hand
and
heard the wood-bird’s words,
the
burden understood, singing of
his
folly in the gore of the speckled glade.
Barry Tempest
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