And Pretty Girls Walk By Poem by Martin Ward

And Pretty Girls Walk By

As a beautiful day embraced
The sleeping place of senseless dust,
Some pretty girls walk by;
Laughing in their innocence
As rightly they should.
How the lads would have longed
For a smile or tender touch.
Vineyards hung with ripening fruits
Shy shells and hailstones,
Sent down from unforgiving skies
Which pass over, then as now.
I placed a stone upon a lonely grave:
One which had been overlooked,
Although maintained in perfect bloom.
We wept together; then and now,
And no-one was omitted from the party:
Friend and foe rest together.
Half of those unknown by name,
But gentle earth knows her own.
What lies beneath the linen
That shades the basket from the sun?
Some simple gift of summer fruits
Or drinks for parched lips of boys
Who work the fields: Like fields of home.
No rows of marble mark that land,
But golden corn, ripened
By the same mother sun that shines
Her radiant love upon them.
Here no corruption can detract
From unconditional love:
Where duty faithfully discharged
For family, King and country
And the greater cause.
Will time erase their memory,
Or fade the very stones that mark their place?
Let none forget them
Who enrich some foreign soil;
Where men walk free because of them,
And pretty girls walk by.