The Unmarked Grave

By Lynn Ockersz

“For King and Country”,

Was the rousing cry in the soldier’s heart,

And the heady slogan,

His charging colleagues loudly voiced,

As they lunged towards the enemy lines,

Unbowed by their adversaries’ blazing guns,

And our soldier was driven,

By the specially fervent thought,

That for him, this was a great moment of pride,

For, the opportunity had arrived,

To bring his country’s enemies,

Under the yoke of the motherland;

But the counter-attack by the enemy was swift,

And soon our soldier went down in the records,

As one of those who had gone “missing”;

Thus, paving the way for inconsolable pining,

By his close kith-and-kin,

Who to this day are without a clue,

As to what could have become of him,

But they would be shouldering a foredoomed task,

By trying to tease out even a trace of the soldier’s remains,

From those arid wastes of countless, unmarked graves,

Where he is said to have met with his end,

And the thought begins to stalk,

Our depressed elders and others of their class,

That they could look forward to little else,

Than officialdom’s benign neglect,

And the Peace wafting across the Graveyard.