LAMENT FOR SOLDIERS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
(in memory of my grandfather)

Your blood is dust,
Trenches of rust through history.
Your bones shine
In the silence of time’s mud.
Your souls sing in the battling wind.

I wear the redness
Of your loss‒
With a stark eye black as grief.
My generation has your graves
In our eyes.

You weep in the nights
When we cannot sleep,
When the rain washes
November’s dead trees
And the sky is as cold

As ashes.

Peter Thabit Jones © 2016

Published in SELECTED POEMS (bilingual: English/Romanian), 2016, and featured in the film Bells on the Western Front, produced by Holly Tree Productions. The film has won several international awards including First Prize in the 2017 Wales International Film Festival.