Passchendaele Poem by Martin Ward

Passchendaele by Martin Ward

Passchendaele sits
on well-balanced soil
which is mainly sand.
Fertile land, the home
of market gardens once,
but underneath the surface
lies London clay.
When shells explode,
clay becomes the cap.

Sitting at seventy feet
above sea level, a ridge
that formed the highest place:
an important place strategically.
Not even a hill; the lip of a saucer
that cupped the spilled-over tea
and dragged them under.
No dregs here, but warm remnants
of dunked biscuits: Rich Tea;
Scottish Shortbread or Bara Brith.

Blood-red, brown-sludge lagoons,
clay-puddled by marching feet,
tracks of tanks or horses' hooves.
The tight-lip has been removed:
flattened in a skeletal landscape.

A church stood on a mound,
but, unlike the flowers, sprung-up
again. It gained stain-glass eyes
that tell of teary Northern Towns,
of Southern Towns, of every town
that bled its youth into the soil around.
Like Canada geese and emigre Aussies
in film reverse returning like homing pigeons.

What is the definition of a mountain?
In metric, six hundred metres, or Imperial,
a summit above two thousand feet.
Passchendaele, or the third Battle of Ypre
was the result of a summit. This land laid bare
and flattened keeps exploding and soon
it will be a mountain, as another politician
calls for another war, or a farmer's son
ploughs a shell left sown into the soil.
This quagmire has not clogged-up rifles
or stopped the tracks of tanks. Passchendaele:
a bloody battle in 'The War To End All Wars'.