Youth Mourning Poem by Martin Ward

Youth Mourning
(oil on canvass, Sir George Clausen)

Grief laid bare
on canvass.

Gone
landscaped fields:
nature stripped and torn,
shorn and desolate.
Where killing fields
of corn are sown.

Man's bile
spewed forth
on nature
and upon the just.

Acid lakes
feed shoots
of green
and tears
quench dust:

What hope
of life
or love?

Yet still I see
exquisite form
pervading this:
what am I
and what is this
that holds me
helpless?

What have men done?

Creator's child,
bereft and naked:
crucified
without a cross.

Here gods
and kings
do not exist,
but angels do:
in mightier form;
in human kind
we greet Our God.