In Lieu of Flowers

In Lieu of Flowers

Last poppies;
Petals like eyelids—
Seeds like holes—gone in a blink!

Dear Mam,

Tomorrow at pallid dawn we go up to repair the lines. I am waiting with Dai and Thomas, jam-packed like your lamb faggots but steeped in the grubby gravy of our sweat. Duw Mam, I try to forget for just a minute now and think of you darning socks by the comfy fire. I want to unpack my troubles, sit by the sea and make salt or else climb Pen-y-Fan to fill my laverbread lungs with daffodilly air. This place blisters me with remembrance; it lashes me to the last post under this perishing sky. I am so very weary. Here even the summer scent of flowers unravels me as we scramble to fit the masks every time we catch a whiff of chapel lilacs. We watch as a flare flies so the black mounds of exploded graves silhouette against the violent red of hell and cloddish ghosts roam looking for reason. This muck of war is like an oil slick on the souls of men and I think we can never scrub off its tangles. No, not even in a hundred years.

God willing I will write you again, if not and my misery is ended, we will meet again in a better place. Give my best love to everyone.

Your loving son,

Geraint