The end of the garden
The purple blooms,
regeneration,
The death of flowers
Each year, ploughed under
But springing fresh despite;
Hopeless optimism or ritual order?
The trees are brooding
evil
In league with Charon,
The psychopomps gather
To escort us into the garden.
Dusk brings petit mort
to the garden,
The sexual death, an end to lovers
A transition from grotto to dungeon.
Death will have her boys.
Yew-tree and holly, stand
guard over the ranks
Of white teeth, serried in the field's green maw.
Unfaced, unnamed, unvoiced save the few -
Robert, William, Rupert, Julian, Thomas, Walter, Ewart, Arthur, Hamish, Wilfred,
Isaac, Hector, Alan, Patrick, Geoffrey, Charles, John, Edward, Theodore; speak
for your men.
Siegfried, Ivor, Robert, Alfred, Edmund; for those left behind.
Bones and blood fertilise
the soil
The better to grow next generations.
Who will continue the flood of nutrients
When the gardener's boys are all gone?
Sanctuary Wood cemetery, Belgium.
21 April 1915 Rupert
Brooke, Greece
8 May 1915 Walter Scott Stuart Lyon, Ypres
26 May 1915 Julian Henry Francis Grenfell, Boulogne
13 October 1915 Charles Hamilton Sorley, Loos
1 July 1916 William Noel Hodgson, the Somme
1 July 1916 John William Streets, the Somme
4 July 1916 Alan Seeger, the Somme
14 August 1916 Robert Harold Beckh, Arras
20 August 1916 William Eric Berridge, Delville Wood
8 October 1916 Leslie Coulson, the Somme
14 November 1916 (Hector Hugh Munro) Saki, the Somme
3 December 1916 Geoffrey Bache Smith, Arras
3 April 1917 Arthur Graeme West, the Somme
9 April 1917 (Philip) Edward Thomas, Arras
10 April 1917 Arthur James 'Hamish' Mann, Arras
28 September 1917 Thomas Ernest Hulme, Belgium
21 November 1917 Ewart Alan Mackintosh, Cambrai
30 December 1917 Patrick Houston Shaw-Stewart, Cambrai
23 March 1918 Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson, the Somme
1 April 1918 Isaac Rosenberg, Arras
26 April 1918 John Ebenezer Stewart, Ypres
4 November 1918 Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Sambre Canal