Soldiers of the light

Chapter 24: THE RIDDLE OF WRECK

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About This Book

The collection gathers lyric and narrative poems that meditate on war, sacrifice, and memory, moving between vivid battlefield tableaux and quieter scenes of civic and domestic life. Several pieces evoke a major battle with landscape detail and soldierly courage, while others adopt ballad, elegy, and devotional forms to reflect on leadership, loss, and public mourning. Recurring themes include the tension between the desire for peace and the exigencies of duty, the sanctity of sacrifice, and the labor of remembrance. A blend of patriotic, mournful, and contemplative tones also turns toward urban hardship, maritime hauntings, and spiritual consolation.

THE RIDDLE OF WRECK

Dark hemlocks, seventy and seven,

High on the hill-slope sigh in dream,

With plumy heads in heaven;

They silver the sunbeam.

One broken body of a tree,

Stabbed through and slashed by lightning keen,

Unsouled, and grim to see,

Hangs o’er the hushed ravine.

A hundred masts, a hundred more,

Crowd close against the sunset-fires.

Their late adventure o’er,

They mingle with the spires.

But one is lying prone, alone,

Where gleaming gulls to seaward sweep,

White sand of burial blown

In sheets about its sleep.

When lightning’s leashed, and sea is still,

Ye sacrificial mysteries dread,

Scapegoats of shore and hill,

Your riddle may be read.