After Mary Robinson

Who has not stirred to hear the restless hum
Of London waking, bathed in amber light?
The screech of buses, chatter in the streets,
The whoosh of cyclists weaving past in streams,
While neon vests of builders blaze like fire
On scaffolded horizons. At the door,
The courier drops a parcel, scanning codes,
A takeaway bag swinging at his side.

Now coffee machines whirr in glass-fronted shops,
And oat-flat-white seekers queue in droves.
On every corner, fruit stalls gleam with hues—
Mango, dragon fruit, and avocados ripe—
While buskers pluck at strings or drum on tins,
Their rhythms swallowed by the sirens' wail.

Along the pavement, runners pace their miles,
Earbuds humming podcasts, heads downturned.
The underground exhales its gusts of heat,
As screens announce delays in sterile tones.
Through sliding doors, the weary office swarm
Spills out, lattes in hand, as newsfeeds scroll
Across impatient thumbs.

Now sunlit glass ignites the towering spires
Of corporate kingdoms; power-suited ghosts
Glide past graffiti scrawled on shuttered shops.
Food vans perfume the air with scents of spice,
As traders banter over steaming woks.

At dusk, the rooftop gardens glow with life,
Cocktails raised to city skylines, while below,
The pavement poets dream of better days—
And London, ever-changing, hums along.

We first saw fire on the tragic slopes
Where the flood-tide of France's early gain,
Big with wrecked promise and abandoned hopes,
Broke in a surf of blood along the Aisne.

The charge her heroes left us, we assumed,
What, dying, they reconquered, we preserved,
In the chill trenches, harried, shelled, entombed,
Winter came down on us, but no man swerved.

Winter came down on us. The low clouds, torn
In the stark branches of the riven pines,
Blurred the white rockets that from dusk till morn
Traced the wide curve of the close-grappling lines.

In rain, and fog that on the withered hill
Froze before dawn, the lurking foe drew down;
Or light snows fell that made forlorner still
The ravaged country and the ruined town;

Or the long clouds would end. Intensely fair,
The winter constellations blazing forth —
Perseus, the Twins, Orion, the Great Bear —
Gleamed on our bayonets pointing to the north.

And the lone sentinel would start and soar
On wings of strong emotion as he knew
That kinship with the stars that only War
Is great enough to lift man's spirit to.

And ever down the curving front, aglow
With the pale rockets' intermittent light,
He heard, like distant thunder, growl and grow
The rumble of far battles in the night, —

Rumors, reverberant, indistinct, remote,
Borne from red fields whose martial names have won
The power to thrill like a far trumpet-note, —
Vic, Vailly, Soupir, Hurtelise, Craonne . . .

Craonne, before thy cannon-swept plateau,
Where like sere leaves lay strewn September's dead,
I found for all dear things I forfeited
A recompense I would not now forego.

For that high fellowship was ours then
With those who, championing another's good,
More than dull Peace or its poor votaries could,
Taught us the dignity of being men.

There we drained deeper the deep cup of life,
And on sublimer summits came to learn,
After soft things, the terrible and stern,
After sweet Love, the majesty of Strife;

There where we faced under those frowning heights
The blast that maims, the hurricane that kills;
There where the watchlights on the winter hills
Flickered like balefire through inclement nights;

There where, firm links in the unyielding chain,
Where fell the long-planned blow and fell in vain —
Hearts worthy of the honor and the trial,
We helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.