WINTER AT SCHILDE Poem by Maurice Gilliams

There are no mothers living on this plain;
snow's falling and, blinder, swamps are bloating.
The silence freezes to the undergrowth,
along dark trails to glaring fields of graves.

But nowhere lullabies rustle,
no peace of winter evening songs.
The barking sound of chained wet dogs;
brown rats crowd the houses.

There, darkly, the hard bread rests,
the frugal food for the bitter days.
And every single mortal soul's complaint
is swallowed in the sweet names of the dead.

II

The village of undeserved defeats
grows numb and cracks with childless huts.
- "In the sand of graves good friends slumber.
Yonder was their house, where shy birds sleep."

The delusion of weeds hides frozen
in the evening-red ice of the creeks.
- "Sadness sighs devoutly and between the sheets.
Dreamed gunfire thunders in crumbling homes."

The dying pain each year of all the grass
weighs down holy on the sour meadows' quiet.
- "Soon the graveyard wall will burst. The iron
cross corrodes on the steeple of desertedness."