Loos

They took my boy to Loos.
He smelled of leather.
He died there in Loos
In trenches, of lead (they say).
They decorated the lads
Most dreadfully.

No-one was there to bless him.
Teeth turned seeds to bloom,
Eyes to roots, a grey below innocence
In the field they call
Passchendaele.
Which means,
I hear,
"Still in bloom."

You don't know the gods at the Somme:
They pluck off buds like moons;
Pale creatures turn fat and still,
Swell up and burst like ballons;
Nights are noisy with the charge of sepulchres.

When they took him away, I thought
I heard him wail; now he's down there
Making caissons out of poppies,
The boy we carved out of heaven's breath,
A boy with the powder of love.
Now just a breath of lead, smell of steel.