Young are our dead
 Like babies they lie
 The wombs they blest once
 Not healed dry
 And yet - too soon
 Into each space
 A cold earth falls
 On colder face.
 Quite still they lie
 These fresh-cut reeds
 Clutched in earth
 Like winter seeds
 But they will not bloom
 When called by spring
 To burst with leaf
 And blossoming
 They sleep on
 In silent dust
 As crosses rot
 And helmets rust.

Spike has a magical way with words. The ability to make a poem seem absurdly simple to compose when it is anything but - unless you are blessed with the skill - is very rare indeed. In “…Lauro” he captures the choked poignancy of the moment of burying the dead deftly and with great economy of words. He manages, at the same time to convey his silent, sad, hopeless anger at the utter stupidity of war and it abbreviation of a life already too brief.

— Siddhartha

Minstrels Links

A very different sort of poem by Milligan is the light-hearted “Teeth”,
Poem #701 on the Minstrels. There’s a biography accompanying it.