JULY


This is a children’s poem written in haste for a friend’s son to read out at school on the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme- (Began 1st July 1916. 310,000 died in the battle: 146,000 Allied, 164,000 German)

A School Visit

The teacher was teaching a lesson
About a long ago war
When a ghost entered the classroom
By simply drifting through the door.
The teacher went on teaching
And didn’t see the ghost’s shadow pass
Nor see the reflection of its face
On the classroom’s murky glass.
“Look, Miss!” shouted the children-
She looked, but saw nothing there
As the ghost crossed the classroom
And sat down in an empty chair.
“What is it?” asked the teacher,
“Are you playing a trick on me?
I’m afraid whatever it is,
It’s something I can’t see.”

It wore an old-fashioned uniform
Of a kind that is long gone,
With badges and big brass buttons,
Like those worn at the Somme.
The teacher carried on teaching
In a rather perfunctory way,
But her heart wasn’t in the lesson-
The children were too restless that day.
At teatime the ghost stood up
And decided to be on its way.
It said the battle the teacher spoke of
Hadn’t quite happen as she’d described.
It said the rats were as big as chickens,
And that the flies were as big as bumble-bees,
That the world was full of horror
And that bones hung like fruit from the trees.
Still, it was glad to be remembered
After so many years had passed
And its three hundred and ten thousand wounds
Had begun to heal at last.
BP