Mametz Wood - a poem

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 A couple of weeks ago I watched a programme about  Welsh soldiers who fought at Mametz Wood in July 1916.  It was really engrossing and unbelievable to think that many of them had never fired a gun and had  been training with broomsticks before being thrown in to face professional German soldiers.  Anyway, I started researching more and wrote this.


Mametz

She greets me by a shell ridden tree
On a carpet of splinters where flowers should be
By a blood filled pond where the dead blindly stare
And the pain of my forefathers hangs in the air.

Queen of the woods she takes my hand
Walks me round this haunted land
Points at barbed wire where bodies are hung
And bullets are flying to slaughter the young.

A steel grey landscape cradles streams of blood
The hands of corpses reach out from the mud
"What is this?" I hear a voice say
I have no answer, I'm generations away.

Branches crash, a million splinters sting
the children forced to fight the lightening.
With faces grimaced they fall to their knees
While she crowns them with a wreath of weeds.

For here they lie, she tells me now
Til the ground is churned by the blade of a plough.
And guardians of history dig where they stood
To reveal the truth of Mametz Wood.

So take this vision to your waking world
Let them feel our pain in your every word
Our spirits may sleep but restless we lie
Til our questions answered.  Why? Why? Why?

copyright 2016 carol ann lewis





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