In dreams, in bombed-out houses,
Where childhood used to play,
Among brambles and briar roses
And grass running to seed I pick my way,
Until I reach a clearing
Of strafed and harrowed ground
Where tombs founder, smoke blackened,
Corroded angels mourning, and no sound.
Finding the grave – a broadsword
Laid on memorial loam
As the tomb cross – and leaning forward
To gouge the sooty lichen from a name,
I glimpse beyond in the greenwood
Some purple artifice
(A helmet plume?) flourishing over
The drawn, despairing, honourable face
Of one whose quest advances
Down broken paths that tend
Toward a past locked in battle
With wrong he knows no future can amend.