Four plaques on a wall in the sun

Four brothers who died in a war.

In the lane by the church, in the square with the flowers,

It’s the price that one village has paid.

There’s a list on the cross and a list by the flags, carved in the hard black stone.

It seems somehow odd that the carved names aren’t there.

They’re the grooves where the stone’s been cut.

They’re marked by their absence, by names that are wounds,

like gaps in the family.

Four brothers. It’s hard.

One died of his wounds, one died at the front and two were shot out of hand.

Did the two die here, on the street by the church?

Was their last sight the tower and the bell?

Did the blood trickle down where I drive to work past the butcher’s and under the wall?

Four limbs from one tree that never will grow.

It’s a lot for one village to pay.

Who watched while they died? Their mother? Their friends?

Were they good? Were they bad? Who will say?

Did they love, did they hate, or were they just mates who paid for their village that day?

Not likely heroes, just ordinary men who told truth and told lies like me,

Who made mistakes, got drunk and slept late, who’d poached a rabbit or three.

But, they shouldn’t have died, it’s not right at all. This village, it’s not very big.

Good, bad, take the lot. It needs all it’s got. That’s part of what villages are.

But, far away, where the great game was played, by clowns who aren’t any use,

Somebody failed and the wrong card was played and a trick for the taking was lost.

And the river of war drained the life from the land.

It sucked all it could reach to dam up the breach as the village atoned for their crime.

And honour and pride and husband and son had to fill it with blood and with grime.

And the game’s still played on by other fools now and the stake is growing again.

It’s too much for a village to pay.