ALONG THE WELSH BORDERS

In the butter-cupped killing fields of the Welsh Borders
we step in iniquitous history every day:
places where the earth was drenched with fresh blood
and filled with broken bones.

Don’t have to look to Cambodia, Rwanda, Silesia
(Butovo, Chechnya, Iraq, Vukovar, Sri Lanka, Appalachee
or to Tamerlane, Caligua, Mao, Idi, Ivan …. on and on)
for here on our doorstep, behind honey-suckled hedgerows
chestnut shaded lanes and tracks
within lilac-scented cottage gardens
the soil itself still holds the horror;
and when the white-faced moon
drops its soft skirts over the lovely land
thin ghosts walk, rising from every ditch and mound
from where they fell unsanctified
or crawled, dying, for cover.
Lost sons of bereft mothers who never had a grave to weep over;
cannon fodder for the territorial aggrandizement of kings and overlords
not to mention the collateral damage of those rural folk
– home-dwellers, young and old, who got in their way.

Every blade of grass, sweet tangle of wild rose and columbine
the hawthorn creaming along the old bye-ways
and bluebells thick as wood-smoke
arise out of the demise of,
not just every primordial life form, plant or creature
in nature's long recycling processes
but embody our own genocidal proclivities
and inheritance of Cain’s murderous genes.

So tread with reverence, today!
The time for restitution is upon us, at the 11th hour
and the opportunity to redeem.