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361st Weekly Poetry Contest winner: The Bell

by T. E. Taylor

Aloof and silent in its gothic tower
the bell hangs like a noose from its great beam.
A ratchet clicks, a finger marks the hour.
The hammer falls at last upon the dream
of peace. Eleven times it booms, then fades
into a dying hum. Before too long,
after the Army’s orgy of parades
a greater music will take up that song.

It will be echoed mournfully by choirs
of clanging bronze, to summon back the souls
of those whose flesh has been consumed by fires
or left to putrefy in muddy holes.
An orchestra of thirty thousand guns 
will play it tunelessly – again, again …
How many of these folk will lose their sons
and learn to hate that ponderous refrain?

All this is yet to be. For now, the crowd
proclaims its faith in what it’s fighting for:
how lustily they wave their hats, how loud
they sing. By the inception of a war
these people seem, at first sight, undismayed.
Look past the smiles, to what the eyes must show,
like those of cattle queuing for the blade –
despite this ecstasy of flags, they know.

First published in Extreme Formal Poetry, Rhizome Press 2021

See all the entrants to 361st Weekly Poetry Contest