The Fierce Light

Day 6 of my personal Poetry Week, where I'm trying to highlight a variety of recent 'poetry purchases ', and this [Saturday] afternoon I've been over in sunny Coatbridge visiting some relatives ...

... and thus; here's a rather powerful verse, as taken from the pictured, local North Lanarkshire Leaflet (which I acquired when we were at the Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life) written by John E. Stewart - Coatbridge's own First World War poet.

Stewart was awarded the Military Cross in 1916/17, but was sadly killed on the 26th April 1918 during the 4th Battle of Ypres:


On Revisiting the Somme

If I were but a Journalist,
And had a heading every day
In double-column caps, I wist
I, too, could make it pay;

But still for me the shadow lies
Of tragedy. I cannot write
Of these so many Calvaries
As of a pageant fight;

For dead men look me through and through
With their blind eyes, and mutely cry
My name, as I were one they knew
In that red-rimmed July;

Others on new sensation bent
Will wander here, with some glib guide
Insufferably eloquent
Of secrets we would hide –

Hide in this battered crumbling line
Hide in these promiscuous graves,
Till one shall make our story shine
In the fierce light it craves.

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John E. Stewart (1889 - 1918)

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