The Pilgrims at Luke Copse - a poem from Rachel Mann's new book, Fierce Imaginings.

The Pilgrims at Luke Copse

 

 

‘I was a dreamer ever…’ – Ivor Gurney

Azure electric, an unbroken sky above Serre,

though a hint of cumulus, a curd summit

for the church’s spire. We’ve come to measure

the distance between here and there, past and now,

from wood to village, time as study in geography –

days measured in inches, months in yards gained,

a decade in how long it took to plot the remains,

the ploughman surveys the field’s annual harvest

of chalk and bone. They buried them where they fell,

the guidebook says, gravestones bring other news:

Lest we and Greater Love, Nobly and Willingly,

To the Memory, To the Glory and Pace, Pace, Pace

while Portland white bleeds green, the windward edge

enough to take bearings, discern the direction

of winter and storm, the yet to come.

Till then, sleepers, dream ever. It might be England,

a cornfield at Ampney Crucis as May turns gold,

 

the green shoot quickens to the swallows' dance.

 

 

This poem can be found in Rachel Mann’s new book, Fierce Imaginings: The Great War, Ritual, Memory and God. It is taken from the beginning of chapter 8 - 'A Battlefield' - How does 'The Land' hold the memory of war? Fierce Imaginings is out now in paperback.