Barrow Byrn we came down to a stern track
Corpse stones from the hillside haunted our packs
Hobble with doughy muscles and cramped boots
Adepts of the bleak bogs and heather route.
Victors entering the less savage ground
Near a town before the weather rolled down
Even so we were lost and it was late
When, like night itself, there to amputate
Our understanding, an apparition,
An old warrior, moss in his jerkin
An evil gleam on the weapons he bore
A call from the wind on the distant moor
This was not the welcome we had hoped find
All thought of comforts driven from our minds
We’d talked of hot baths and broth and dry clothes
And then the soldier spoke and our thought froze.
“I will tell you a fable, you have heard before
No old photograph, white cracks and young faces
Nor a patient in a distant hospital
Ill from forgotten causes in lost places
You will listen, for this is your story too.
As sure as I know I was there, so were you.
“You were with me on guard duty watching it
Knowing the danger inaction would cite
Going in too late
“Every hour the skirmish grew more ferocious
We could have stopped it before it boiled us
But still no orders
“You too sold your sinew for pillaged treasure
Walked through the gore of some other man’s war
Eyes perjured and stuffed ears
“Played dice for the rings and teeth of dying men
Stripped the fields of their women and children
Deaf to their screaming.
“We laboured, an act of will through smoke and muck
A remembered vow to comrades down-struck.
Then one stroke of luck
“Like old rotten timber the whole gave way
Of a sudden knew this would be our day,
Foe, fell in dismay.
“We had fought, until we would drop, numb with pain,
You were there to share the victory din
Stood up wondering
“We knew what it meant to be men
We could see that every step we marched
Which had seemed a step into death
Was a step in a victory march
“The steps to practice our weapons
The paces marched in the parades
Our polished will obedient
Had made it inevitable.
“I wish we had known our strength on the cold nights
When fear emptied our bowels and death leering
Over the defences, fear too often drunk,
A bitter drug that saved us with its alert.
Those who drank too deep died in foetal horror,
Abstainers were too dangerous to be near.
It corrupted, addicts, sleepless forever
“When it was over
We thought we had known the hardest times
Our homes waited still
But we could not bear to go
To dig the soil season after season
Wait like those stunned by the battle’s shock
Vacant standing like a swaying harvest
For a grim scythe.
“We no longer knew who we were
The steps taken then were less certain
No sure footing to wield a weapon.
Victory and defeat were easy issues.
This seemed less simple and more dangerous.”
“What do you want of us ?” we asked.
“Why do you talk so
As if we had been comrades in an old campaign
And had nothing to do but to talk about it again and again ?”
“You cast spells in the charmed lowlands
I cannot go beyond the circle
You saw a séance through my eyes
But have forgotten
I walked as slow as blood seeping across the stone wend
Only to tell you that nothing has changed
“Here is the crux, how do you act
When the battle is raging all around ?
Look and you will see, it is raging all around.
Will you say, ‘I am weak’, and snivel by
Or boast but still be unwilling to meet my eye ?
Will you scatter like leaves before the winter’s wind;
Will you call yourself a victim and all others severe;
Be subject to the weather, your bad luck or your body’s ague
Be prey of your meekness or the others’ strength or intrigue ?
I tell you stand near, see more clearly
You will fare better together than you can ever apart
But I may have been wrenched from death in vain
Men have yet to show that they can gain from me or their history
“You may be defeated and the waters close over you
More simple times and profound arrive and renew.
“Careful of mists, remember you are the lamp and the street
March on your own and you will die of your own conceit.”
The ghost had gone, as if it had never been
But every stone block and fallen leaf knew me,
While I knew nothing,
Knew that I had never known anything.
It will no longer do.
We have not finished our walk on the hills,
And I must talk with you.
