Written by Mike Skele
On the TGV from Paris to Frankfurt
I hear their blood screaming,
countless voices, long neglected
but known and loved or despised
by all who lay beside them,
comrades in anguish, and yet,
even they were unaware that
their blood refreshed the broken
chemistry of those who fell before
by sword or cannon, rifle or mace.
Here a man who refused to bow,
there a woman who could but bow,
a knight-fall, a beheading, a bludgeoned
innocent or a vile serpent of a man,
all stirring the same soil, contributing
their carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen
to the sweet, sweet plums and peaches.
The train shrieks across field and drumlin,
past hillocks, tussocks, and cassocks
shorn of their clerics, no longer prayed for,
candles long since extinguished, forgotten.
Hurry up, no time to tarry, useless anyway.
And suddenly, on a wooded hill,
a castle turret still ravaged by time,
above a shallow stream
waiting for its lifeblood
to be enriched
again.
Text © Mike Skele
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By Mike Skele
