Poem for November
Golf on the Somme
I came to find his name on Menin Gate
and play golf on that special ground but found
I heard on every fairway, green and tee
the silent screams, the rumbling guns, could see
in my mind’s eye, the bloodshed all around.
Though poised to putt, I could not concentrate.
A shambles, massacre, Triangle Wood,
now Hole Thirteen - is this where Grandpa fell?
Hole Three, known as Our Lord’s Tree - there, an oak
resprouted as Christ crucified. My stroke
was off as I paused, thought what kind of hell
was there, how that regrowth’s symbolic good.
Eye level, nicely placed, I found his name,
in Ypres, at evening heard the last trumpet,
considered whether playing golf is quite
acceptable here where so many died,
decided well, perhaps but not quite yet.
Like him, because of him, I lost the game.
Dorothy Pope 1935 -