At the Summer Exhibition 2011 Royal Academy, Piccadilly, London.
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look around and see….”
Lamentation 1:12
In transit from Scottish foundry
to Picardy battle field –
the Croix Rouge Farm Memorial.
A bronze statue of an
unblemished soldier
carrying a dead comrade
laid across his arms.
In London -
a brief station of remembrance.
It forms an awkward cruciform of bodies,
commands its own vortex of silence
among the summer visitors
who come and go
through intermittent July rains.
I stare up at this bronze cenotaph.
And as it rains again
I see the bayonet
silvered with water
slung over his shoulder
and follow the soldier’s bowed head down
to the cradled body.
An offering.
And I imagine his slow insistent march South
to that remote farmhouse
its undisturbed fields
clogged with mud
where only a few will come.
The rain is beading down
the bronze bodies
Water falls from the bandaged head
and unmarked dog tags.
And suddenly I hear
the chimes of Fortnum and Masons striking eleven
and the roar of traffic on Piccadilly.
Click here to take you to the website about this statue
