Easter 2016 Poem by Terence Winch

Was it the brave men dying
or the sad girls crying that made
all those bells ring out? A million
of us climb out onto the big hands
of the clock and turn it back a hundred
years. There we see the bodies piled
high and the buildings laid low.
We hear someone on a street
corner singing a song about
the strangers, how they came
to stay and would never go away.
We are marching up the avenue.
We are drilling and training in secret
in the countryside. Someday the hands
will spring us back into the lap
of the everyday, where we find
ourselves right now, alive and free,
scanning our debit cards
with nothing, it seems, to fear
in the spring time of the year.