The necromancers

(Reflections on Armed Forces Memorial Day 2014 in Stirling)

See clarty kirkholes open wide
where Scotia's honoured dead did bide!
The dead, undone, keek at the sun,
so unaccustomed to the light.
Their tarnished medals, once so bright,
some won in actions now condemned,
hang daubed with glaur and ragged hems.
See winds blow through their tattered clothes
and through the ribs that lie exposed
as they seek those who summoned them,
and made similitude of life
in those death has released from strife.

Lined up in pristine uniforms
beneath the fly-past and salute,
the living stand two minutes stiff
in mute similitude of death,
to share the silence of the dead
just for a while, with respect.
Their medals bright, their epaulettes,
have yet to see the rust and sweat,
their hearts to feel their courage stall,
with fear before the final fall
into the mud; and solitude
that's witnessed through a sniper's sight,
until his trigger sounds its knell;
and mud, from which the dead emerge
as reassembled limbs converge
now summoned by some eldritch spell
to quit the silent halls of hell,
and show the day their share of night.

There is a thread that stretches back,
connects the future to the past,
a thread so thin, yet strong as steel
or spider's silk, and they will play
upon this string, who cast this spell,
a tune to make us dance today:
the necromancers, puppeteers,
who raise us high and lay us low
with cheers and tears and shadow shows.

The pageant and display persuades
the fools but not the wise. The sage
prefer the words of reason but
no reasons are found in the grave:
there chaos is defeated not
by reason but by silence. But
the dead must speak! It's why they're here!

It's why the turf was rolled away
and dead boys dug up here today.
It's why the dignitaries pray,
invoking ghosts of history,
and con with ermine mystery
while children starve. The script prepared
for heroes is distributed
to bony hands beneath dead eyes
for mouths to speak, to tell the tale
of glories past and sell new lies
of old wars fought and new wars sought,
and what we ought. Alas, they fail.

Mouths move but from the lips drip bullets,
from the eyes seep tears of earth,
dark sodden muddy tears. No words
are left to these who were deprived
of voice and choice by generals
when into hell they were consigned
to save the empire "God" designed
the day their futures were denied.

You'll see this story lacks a bold
and brave young hero, so let's say
the hero of this tale I've told
is just a face among the crowd,
a girl watching the parade.

She's Cutty Sark, but as a child,
before the wicked world unfolds
and finds her gone astray. The wild
and wanton witch has yet to show
and never will: the outcome hung
a while in the scales between
embodiment of all that's fine,
and the demonic feminine
another tetrametric verse
has taught us all to fear and curse.
Unlike that anti-heroine,
that anti-eurydice quine,
from Scotia's dreich dark underworld
another path was for this girl,
she makes for us another choice:
to rescue from the necromancers
all their mute and mirthless dancers
Breaking step, in softest voice
she speaks up quietly to implore

"Instead go to the furthest place where bugles have not blared,
to find the silence and the space to speak short words and spare
- no grave is there, and innocent of human presence still
that place remains - and let their names hang in the icy air."