Grandpa

What did you do in the war Grandpa?
His faded blue eyes misted in sorrow
Silenced the room filled with comrades
Who’d died.
The muddy trenches and hammering guns
young corpses, which littered his past
He’d walked down to the sea a boy
And returned from the water a man
His war had defeated illusions
Studying classics had been his aim
Then a wizened young man came
Back to see his life as a surgeon.
He taught so much I’d never have learned
That all life is precious, that no one is better
All this he’d seen in the mud at Ypres
And passed down to his offspring
But one lesson this clever man knew
That war is destructive, slaughters all hope
though he could not find words to express it.
yet his silence encompassed all that.