Listen

Listen


by Gillian Clarke

to the chant that tranced me
thirty years ago
in Samarkand: the call to prayer
at dawn;

to that voice again, years and miles
from then,
in the blood-red mountains
of Afghanistan;

to the secret placing of a double-bomb
at a dark hour in a Helmand street;

to the first foot to tread
the viper's head,
the scream that ripped the morning's
rising heat;

to the widow's wail as she crouches
in the rubble
over a son, a brother torn apart;

to a mother dumb with shock
who locks her door
and sits alone, taking the news to heart;

to the soldier's words,
"It's World War One out here";
to the rattled air,
the growl of the grenade;

to a chanting crowd fisting
the foetid air;
to a silent Wiltshire town
at a last parade;

to ruin ripening in poppy fields;
to barley burnished
in the summer air;

to the sound at dusk,
cantata of despair,
the holy call become a howl
of prayer


Posted over on Guardian, UK