I stand here now
facing a monument to futility
and the base spirit of man
This last line held
outside the walls of Verdun
The legacy left
of the ruler's deceit
Neither Keiser nor King
stood on this killing field
or even the soil of France
I see this blue French sky
once lost in roiling smokes
Where the guns blazing
sounded death knells in the air
So many lost here
to Gun and Gas and Bomb
and the poppies grow
in a soldier's blood
This Ossuary built in memory
to the gathered corpses
taken from the cold land
A Rosebush sown for every soul
in this garden of headstones
You can stand here too
and see the bones piled high
These once living men
lost to an insane carnage
At peace here now
in a tomb of skeletons
And reaching high above
a sentinal to the loss
In long neat serried ranks
as if in cold worship
these white stones stand
No last prayers said
for young lives lost to savagery
on bright red and ravaged soils
Names carved on stone
a last forlorn reminder
of men who once sang
but now lie here
In the gathered solitude
I have stood
in the Cloisters eighteen alcoves
and the last cry uttered
by one hundred thousand souls
echoes down the long years
to haunt me still
