Mons

That dire cacophony of sound
Was all they needed in the still
To set the blasting scorching flame
Afoot with terrible devils.

The battered guns spewed forth rounds
They agonised in liquid flame
The ditch-smeared bodies filled the ground,
The bravery now turned fear and shame

While one side gave the others took.
That day every soldier tried
While wicked hail the foreground shook
To hold the ground where others died

And only in a twisting face
Where teeth from blackened youths displayed
Ironic, grinning innocence erased
Was caught the gleam of human soul

As from his eye a glaze betrayed
Unnatural consequences to the mortal
As Death's still angel through this portal
Sought its victims to enrol

The earth no longer held its dead
A pale blue angel born instead
The shiver of that serene mist
More harrowing than war's great fist.

It grew and hovered in the sky
And seemed to know why none asked why:
It is the hell of man's own making
Man's to give for man's own taking.

An awesome stillness settled over
And in that single timeless hour
A huge abuse of man's own power
Was seen inside that strange blue flower.

And then the numbing spell was broken
The sky dissolved with rain from hell.
In bloody deluge, more men fell
In blind distress of man's creating.

This devilish blessing went to ground.
It grew and festered thirty years
And all the while more bitter hued
With sulphurous yellow was imbued.

Then at last again was found
A deadly mushroom scorching tears
In the general whim of blast
The future flirted with the past.

When this plague again took root
On that clinching August day
When disgorged its deadly fruit
The aeroplane Enola Gay.