The Fallen - Richard Fleming

He does not lie in foreign fields.

No unmarked grave or simple cross,
in distant lands, conceals his bones.

Life is this soldier’s albatross.

Drink’s a temptation and he yields:
booze brings oblivion.

The stones
fly up to meet him.

It’s absurd
that he should brave a war yet fall,
unmourned, in some civilian street,
dead to the world,
dead drunk,
awol.

He lies in vomit, vision blurred,
used, decommissioned, obsolete.

Richard Fleming