Draft in the author’s style. This poem was written for Poet in the Battlefield to sit beside the author’s own readings, and is waiting for the author’s review. The commentary is a working draft too.
At noon on the seventh day a bell began to toll,
From the chapel in the middle of the smoking, shattered knoll.
The soldiers on both sides put down the weapons in their hands,
And stood in silent wonder in the dust of the broken lands.
A soldier from the north and one from the south met by the stream,
And shared a crust of bread between them, like a fragile dream.
They did not speak of causes, and they did not speak of flags,
They spoke of home and mothers, and of how the long march drags.
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Commentary
In some wars, a single bell has stopped the fighting for an hour. This eight-line epic imagines such a pause and the small human meeting that grows inside it.
“At noon on the seventh day a bell began to toll” from “the chapel in the middle of the smoking, shattered knoll.” The soldiers on both sides “put down the weapons in their hands” and stand “in silent wonder.”
A soldier from the north and one from the south meet by a stream and “shared a crust of bread between them, like a fragile dream.” “They did not speak of causes,” only “of home and mothers, and of how the long march drags.”