The kind old sun

Move him into the sun —
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, —
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved — still warm — too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
— O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?

Wilfrid Owen

Remembering Henry and Harry and Arthur and Philip and William and Andrew and Alan and …

And remembering Stephen R’s reflections, and the memorials across the years in town and village squares – here and abroad, and the infant shaking the trembling hand of a long-ago liberator, and the lone bugler remembering his daddy at The Tower …

Oh, remembering …

Let us stand in the warmth of the sun.