Armistice: Loss is the Great Lesson

One hundred years ago today a nameless British soldier was lovingly borne from a muddy battlefield in France to Westminster Abbey where he was buried with great ceremony.  To mark the occasion, poet laureate, Simon Armitage, has written a tribute using the analogy of sleeping rough and finally coming home to lie at rest. 

On the coffin lay a wreath of red roses interwoven with bay leaves; women who lined the streets carried white chrysanthemums hoping that the body might be their husband, their son. Always flowers at a funeral to mask the horror and symbolise the life that will go on, no matter how bloody the battle.  In her poem, Poppies, Mary Oliver, writes that 'loss is the great lesson,' but that it is also an invitation to happiness which can be 'palpable and redemptive'. 

The losses we are facing in this pandemic threaten to rob us of all meaning.  My hope is that I learn whatever lessons are here for me and do not die 'none the wiser and unassuaged'. (from A Bitterness by Mary Oliver)

The Bed by Simon Armitage

Sharp winds scissor and scythe those plains.
And because you are broken and sleeping rough
in a dirt grave, we exchange the crude wooden cross

for the hilt and blade of a proven sword;

to hack through the knotted dark of the next world,

yes, but to lean on as well at a stile or gate

looking out over fens or wealds or fells or wolds.

That sword, drawn from a king’s sheath,

fits a commoner’s hand, and is yours to keep.

And because frost plucks at the threads

of your nerves, and your bones stew in the rain,

bedclothes of zinc and oak are trimmed

and tailored to fit. Sandbags are drafted in,

for bolstering limbs and pillowing dreams,

and we throw in a fistful of battlefield soil:

an inch of the earth, your share of the spoils.

The heavy sheet of stone is Belgian marble

buffed to a high black gloss, the blanket

a flag that served as an altar cloth. Darkness

files past, through until morning, its head bowed.

Molten bullets embroider incised words.

Among drowsing poets and dozing saints

the tall white candles are vigilant sentries

presenting arms with stiff yellow flames;

so nobody treads on the counterpane,

but tiptoeing royal brides in satin slippers

will dress and crown you with luminous flowers.

All this for a soul

without name or rank or age or home, because you

are the son we lost, and your rest is ours.