The Same Fields

By Matthew Parish

They said it would be over by the spring—

That flowers would grow again where shells had burst,

That boys who left with laughing eyes would sing

Of victory and home. The worst

Was not the waiting, but the way it stayed:

The mud, the lists, the slow unlearning of parade.

For peace, they said, is what we’re dying for.

But peace, like faith, grows thinner every year.

Each cause becomes another coat of war,

Worn threadbare, then replaced. The cheer

That sent them off turns quiet, old men stare

At statues no one asked them to repair.

And still the same fields wait, in patient green,

For someone else to find a reason why

Men must become the things they once had seen

And feared, before they learned to die.

The wind goes on rehearsing what it said:

It changes nothing, only counts the dead.