Mells Churchyard (For Siegfried Sassoon) Copyright © Richard Whiting 2010

The conspicuous gallantry which was your life
Knew little peace, such as this peace of Mells
Between the avenue of yews
The shadows of St Andrew’s Church
To the simple stone that marks the place
Where forever you lay.

Do those fields of ripening wheat,
The gently folding Mendip skies,
Sweet wild garlic tasted on the breeze,
Take you back to a Wealden youth
At The Old Century’s turn
Under a dome of always azure sky?

Or does this land, this Somerset serenity
Leave you casting your Subaltern’s eye
Over ridges, vales and wood
Imagining the saps, the Salient
The duck-board, mud and rats
Of your summers on the Somme?

Those twisted, tortured, death-ridden days
When foreign fields filled with corpses
Never again for England;
Somehow you made it through
And here, in this pastoral peace you lie
In Memoriam.

In Wootton Bassett, forty miles from your grave,
Youth still mourns its daily doom
Like wheat cut green.
Can the breeze still carry your voice?
Does anyone hear your words?

Oh Jesus, make it Stop.

Mells, Somerset July 2010

Final line from Attack, by Siegfried Sassoon