English Studies Forum

In the Desert

Neil Ramsey 

How quietly the smoke rolled over the finished up

battlefield [to the tune of the Grenadiers’ March].

At length you saw the tanks shuffle off

and that was that

bar the grinning corpse

and a mountain of bones,

Monty et al.,

red arrows on a map,

here lies a really big

blood stain, scale 1:1.

Counting the years that passed,

keeping your old radio and your hats

and medals, building the model Cromwell

out of pieces from the plastic sprue.

You would always say that it looked so

much smaller than the real thing.

In your hat we’d make noises like guns.

And grandpa, so many people

remembered your

ripe blood with statues

and pictures, that

I could hardly

recognise you at all. Writing your

name endlessly in the halls and plaques

and poems etcetera, till it wasn’t even

your name anymore, and you were

always there in the street above us,

in bronze. And you were all grandpas,

an über grandpa, primordial

slime grandpa, somehow

you made us all with your

wood and metal gun. Here

you are grandpa, in this strange desert.