Chill, break of day
A light frost thawing
Sun, pale and grey
A spectral morning

Tractors crawl, horsepower straining
Carve the earth , the ploughshares turning
The sod that hides where dead men lie
The lost and fallen of wars gone by
Gathering the iron harvest
Reminders of their bloody madness
Whose bones in furrows sometimes rise
To plead to be identified

To join the ranks of comrade soldiers
Buried beneath the bleached , white crosses
Names and numbers cut in stone
The regiment they called their home
The age they reached, the day they died
Their memory is all that does survive
In tended graves they rest in peace
Their battle finally over

The rolling , trembling thunder
Rides the ridge of Bazentin
Detonations scatter clouds of crows
The tree line offers refuge
To the wide-eyed, startled deer
Launch, plunging through the bracken
They head into the shadows
Of the High Wood

The oaks majestic, standing proud and tall
Holding their position on a landscape lost in time
The roots dug in the sore contested ground
The gnarled and twisted timbers betray the battle scars of yore

The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken
The wounds will heal in rings of time, the circle is unbroken

Half buried in the forest floor decay
Broken, rusting weaponry beneath the fallen leaves
The shells that failed still hold their deadly load
Dormant in the undergrowth, their promise only stalled

The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken
The wounds will heal in rings of time, the circle is unbroken
The wood will rise, the wood will fall, the circle is unbroken
The wounds will heal in rings of time, the circle is unbroken

In the darkness of the High Wood
It ’s so dense I can hardly breathe
A stark and muffled silence
I stand alone amongst the trees
Are they ghosts or moving shadows?
Are they spirits gone before?
Are these the restless souls still wandering
The ones that were forsaken
In the High Wood?