crags, cold and gray--tedious time
has little worn their edges

grandfather moved a thousand his four score years
in these emerald moors

father too, before the war, when he left the rocks
for others to move, the sheep for others to sheer

grandmother never forgave him for leaving;
the queen had not asked for his body or soul

in the blood red fields of the Somme, he never missed the place

nor his mum, whose heart gave out when she heard
he died in a French trench, of the Spanish flu

after that, grandfather let others tend to his flock
and moved not another stone

now thirty and five, back from my own foul war
I walk these pastures with only misty memories of them:

father, son and steed, dragging boulders
across dew drenched grass, to walls that yet stand
but now guard only the dead

Crossgates, Wales, 1946