The Stones Took Wing

O glory be! what privilege to die
For God and monarch, state and politician!
The Cenotaph stood preaching in position,
A righteous missile pointing at the sky.
Through daydreams of red buttons which let fly
Projectiles to exterminate sedition,
Red paper petals fluttered on their mission
To gaud dry plastic pupils of dead eye.

Two minutes' peace! The silence lay so light,
Heroes entrenched were called up from their lairs.
Over the top! and from each corpse's face,
Disgust grinned at the bloody, solemn slight,
And from the graveyards and the city squares,
The stones took wing, and fled that sorry place.

Tommy Rott