Chill, break of day, a light frost thawing,
Sun, pale and grey, a spectral morning,
Tractors crawl, horsepower straining,
Carve the earth the ploughshares turning
The sod that hides where dead men lie,
The lost and fallen of wars gone by,
Gathering the iron harvest reminders of their bloody madness
Whose bones in furrows sometimes rise to plead to be identified.
To join the ranks of comrade soldiers buried beneath the bleached white crosses
Names and numbers cut in stone, the regiment they called their home,
The age they reached the day they died, their memory is all that does survive
In tended graves they rest in peace their battle finally over
The rolling trembling thunder rides the ridge of Bazentin
Detonations scatter clouds of crows
The tree line offers refuge to the wide eyed startled deer
Launch, plunging through the bracken they head into the shadows of the High Wood
The oaks majestic standing proud and tall
Holding their position on a landscape lost in time
The roots dug in the sore contested ground
The gnarled and twisted timbers betray the battle scars of yore
The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken, the wounds will heal in rings of time,
The circle is unbroken
Half buried in the forest floor decay
Broken rusting weaponry beneath the fallen leaves
The shells that failed still hold their deadly load
Dormant in the undergrowth their promise only stalled
The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken, the wounds will heal in rings of time,
The circle is unbroken
The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken, the wounds will heal in rings of time,
The circle is unbroken
In the darkness of the High Wood it's so dense I can hardly breathe, a stark and muffled silence
I stand alone amongst the trees.
Are they ghosts or moving shadows, are they spirits gone before?
Are these the restless souls still wandering, the ones that were forsaken in the High Wood.