Remembering, in layers

My collage today is necessary because the first of the photos, of the spire of the Basilica of Albert, a town in the north of France in the area that became notorious as The Somme, was taken in 2009 and I wasn't blipping then, so I needed to create a new photo to include it in. During the Battle of the Somme, the British soldiers were convinced that if the statue fell from the tower, they would lose the battle. The mural on the houses shows how it looked - apparently engineers went up and wired it on. I took the photo on a battlefield trip with a historian and a group of friends, where we learned a great deal. The photo on the right was taken this morning after the service in church. 

You may have seen me mention the other day that I'd come across some poems that I'd worked on and abandoned - I think Covid stultified creativity - and one of them arose from a line that came to me on another journey, our crossing of Europe to Venice on the Orient Express in 2018. As we sat at dinner among the splendours of the dining carriage, we suddenly saw the golden statue on the basilica across the fields at sunset, and realised exactly where we were. One line came into my brain and lodged there, and from that line came the poem. This is the first time I've published it anywhere, as the western world wakes up yet again to the knowledge of the frailty of peace.

Orient Express

The wheels of the train like a children’s song
went round beneath us as the glasses clinked;
the knives gleamed silver in the setting sun 
and waiters swayed in the effortless dance
and few looked outside as they bent to their meal,
saw the small towns rise from the rolling fields,
saw the spire-borne virgin flash like steel,
saw the neat graves and the sword-hung cross.

But some were who looked, and knew where they sped, 
and saw instead carnage, and mud, and fire
where the quiet fields covered the bones of the dead.
And the laughs rose uncaring, and the train raced on
and we drank red wine as we passed through the Somme.


©C.M.M. 11/23