WW1

Anna's just returned from the High Storrs WW1 Battlefields tour, which I went on two years ago as well. Afterwards we had to do some kind of creative project based on experience: I wrote a poem which I thought I'd post for nostalgia purposes. I wrote this after seeing one of the German cemeteries in that area of Belgium: unlike the French/British/Commonwealth ones, it's not as grandiose- many were built in the retreat from the front, and there's not as much funding and effort that goes to maintain them- rather somber affairs.

Entropy
My body lies, dead, with my countrymen, my friends, my brothers-in-arms
Above me, lies a headstone; it declares me “unknown”- I beg to differ:
For I know me; though, my name? Forgotten by mortal ears, remembered only by another stone
Carved to record and remember,
Carved by hands which themselves are dead; dead then, or dead now;
For time is not the great healer but the great destroyer

Those who buried us are dead, and those who buried them will be dead before I have been dead twice over
When dead, a different perspective reveals itself
Time does not concern. Patriotism and vigour forgotten- though we had neither of much toward the end
The order came to make a stand, to fight and so we did
Oh how we fought. Until the bitter end. And bitter it was. We span in our graves,
For the injustice of it.

I lie here, with my fellow countrymen
And our dead cheeks weep unseen tears. Betrayed? Betrayal from no-one. No-one but God.
What had we done to deserve this? We fought because we had to:
For glory; for the sun.
That sun seems so far away now

I lie, in this decaying place, uncared for now, small efforts holding back the inevitable tide of ruin
Death comes to all. Leave me to it. That and my grave, it's all I have
I have no name that I can call my own. Merely an inscription. Generic in it's sympathy
It reads “Unbekannter Soldat”. What name I had once has fallen

Who was I? Ha
“Johann Schmidt”. And if you believe that, I swear, you'll believe anything.
Leave me. Go and decay as all do
There is no optimism in a graveyard
Not for us
Not for you
Not for anyone
We just know it better than the rest.