Ode to the Soldiers

The bells! The bells, they toll for victory

Hard fought and won upon the heaping fields

Of mud scorched black by emptied armories

And blood of bodies brave who would not yield.

To them, to them they toll for all but naught

Who fought and died there in the worst of hell

Those dead; the brightest of the hope-lit souls

To walk the twilight of ’shrined progress fraught

With blinding pride and hubris great to knell

The gongs of war: the bells, the bells, they toll.

And throbbing now upon November air

A cry goes up and mingles with their sound

A scream of joy, perhaps, or bold fanfare

To ’nounce the end of war and loud expound

Relief for lengthy tension snapped at last.

Yet there among the joyous clamor bright

A sorrow note clashes ’gainst glad revel

Dragged slow through sky, its wake: a silence vast

Just broken by a wailing wordless fright

Of dreaded news now brought long to level

A heavy blow upon the grief-bent head

Of one lone mother who long wrote and hoped

To see her son return from war to wed

The girl who short would find her throat tight groped

By wracking tears and strangled falling moans.

The bells toll hollowly for past-known sons

When war yet won is lost when best is burned

On pyres of pride and greed that flaming groans

Beneath the weight of sacrifice in tons:

The lives not lived and futures never learned.

The bells! The bells, will ring for something bright

When men and sons will die for more than naught

They go forth bravely who for others fight

And stand upon freed lands that their blood wrought

Where peace will spread across a land once bound

In fears, despair and mercy lacked by those

Who led for gain to self and not the whole.

Those men who died in wars some base, some sound

By duty called decisive they arose

To fellows guard and reach the crucial goal.

The bells! The bells, still toll for mothers' sons

And daughters brave who gave their essence all

Against the threat and thund’ring of the guns

And raging death where they did lastly fall.

So lift the mothers and the dead sons high

And Daughters, fathers we remember too

Write fading names upon your mournful soul

Lest we forget the past in last goodbyes;

Do not erase that bleak November view

Of fallen souls for whom the bells, the bells,

They toll.

(On this Remembrance Day I dedicate this poem to all those who serve, or have served, in the military. Also, I dedicate this to all those who have relatives who serve or have served. Your sacrifices will not be forgotten.)