Verdun
The canons are silent at Verdun.
Windswept memories still bend the flowers, and tattered armies sleep forever in frozen graves where empires of sand were built by barb-wire historians who felt the wounds and heard the screams of charcoal-faced warriors long after the victors had gone home.
And, the poets still remanence beside the cobblestone fireplaces. Lovers laugh, talk of Spring, back-porch autumn afternoons.
And as the guns of Verdun subside, no one hears the moans of distant battlefields expect the ghosts of mothers wondering aimlessly along the whitewashed markers searching for their lambs who were sacrificed so mankind might know how to measure its madness.
Ruly