When onto the harvest field, drained dry in battle,
Night lies down - silent and bottomless -
The sorrowful Madonna steps once more
To where death stood in formation.
With thin fingers of dove-grey haze
She gathers quietly into her grassy hems
The sharp fragments that in the frozen field
Sprouted into steel blossom at dawn.
She will wash every ragged edge with dew,
Will heal the scar upon the burnt armour,
And cleave the trembling blue with her own body,
To give the old pain over to the heights.
She will scatter sorrow across the dome of heaven -
Constellations of Casings and Arrows, fiery signs.
Where poppies choked in black blood,
The abyss will pour a starry compress.
This age is bitter with both gunpowder and sleep,
Glitters with iron - empty and stern.
This is our memory - a burnt-out sea
That congeals beneath molten glass.