Honor’s Folly

Scourie, Scotland, 11/11/20

I sit against the cenotaph
in Portreetown on Isle of Skye,
to sense the lives of long-gone lads
who went away to war and died. 

The fading silent faceless names 
of a generation so betrayed, 
who never gently brushed away 
their daughter’s tears on her wedding day. 

My granddad signed up in ‘17
and joined the fight at Chateau-Thierry;
I wonder whether he shared a drink 
with some of these fallen sons of Portree. 

Their thrice-great grandkids should be here
around me now quite happily,
riding bikes with no more cares
than what their mums will make for tea. 

No memorial shows the names
of the maimed, insane and ever-changed,
nor of the mums, sweethearts and wives
of the lost generation sent to die. 

Nor the shell-shocked who returned 
as strangers to those left behind;
as shells themselves left uninterred
in a NoMans Land of soul and mind. 

We make these cenotaphs so clean,
with words to honor the true and brave,
and poems “in grateful memory”
of the ones who bled for their native state. 

And always always! to the glory of God,
who we like to fantasize takes sides;
like any father worth a sod 
would choose which child he wants to die! 

Instead of marble and parades
and etchings like, “The Glorious Dead”,
what if our cenotaphs were made  
to show the horror of war instead? 

If every name we etch in place
could bleed and scream like a wounded man, 
maybe then we’d hesitate
before we do it all again.  

Can there be a war to end wars?
Sounds like a folly of honor to me.
Is glory really worth dying for?…
Can dark end dark? 
Can dead boys dream?

Lee DeNoya - Portree, Isle of Skye, 11/11/20