Jack Cornwell was a Boy, First Class
On the Chester’s forward gun,
There to relay the settings with
A pair of headphones on,
He’d turned sixteen just months before
Was trained for his chosen task,
And hoped for a life of adventure as
He sailed, before the mast.

The Chester sailed to join the Fleet
That had left from Scapa Flow,
The Grand Fleet with its battleships
Sailed under Jellicoe,
They’d intercepted the German codes
And knew that they’d put to sea,
Hoping to split the British Fleet
And gain a victory.

The Chester turned to meet the flash
Of gunfire, far away,
The light was poor before the dawn
And the mist was thick that day,
Three funnels of a German ship
Came gliding through the mist,
And the Chester turned to starboard
Ready to show the British fist.

But the German ship was not alone
And the shells began to rain,
From the following battle cruisers
Shattering decks, in blood and pain,
Jack Cornwell stood at his post while all
His gun crew lay there dead,
Ready to take his orders, though
The Chester turned, and fled.

The medics found him with shrapnel wounds
Steel splinters in his chest,
He wouldn’t desert his post, he was
As brave as all the rest,
The Chester sailed for Immingham
Disembarked the wounded crew,
Put Jack in Grimsby Hospital,
There was nothing they could do.

He died just two days afterwards
Before his mother came,
She’d hurried on up from London
Where she’d caught the fastest train,
They buried Jack in a communal grave
So many men had died,
Fighting for King and country
Steeped in duty, worth and pride.

His name was honoured from lip to lip
How he’d stood beside his gun,
Determined to fight the German ships
‘Til the Chester turned to run,
Such courage born of England
Where it was tempered at the forge,
Was so inspiring in one so young
Said the Navy, to King George.

‘For shame,’ then cried the ‘Daily Sketch’
When they heard of the communal grave,
‘Is this how we treat our heroes,
Jack deserves the nation’s praise!’
The coffin was shortly disinterred
And draped with the Union Jack,
Drawn on an open gun carriage
With the Navy at its back.

His name went down in the history books
As the boy who stuck to his post,
In the midst of dead and dying men
As they made their way to the coast,
King George conferred the highest award
That there was, for bravery,
Awarded him the Victoria Cross,
Jack Cornwell, Boy, V.C.

David Lewis Paget

I

Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.

In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,

Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,

She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,

Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.

II

I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,

Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.

III

Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.

CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the king's street.
Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel.
The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November drizzles wrap the two, one in tall leather boots, one in wool leggins.
Also I place it in the record: the Swedish people may name boats after me or change the name of a long street and give it one of my nicknames.
The old men who beset the soil of Sweden and own the titles to the land-the old men who enjoy a silken shimmer to their chin whiskers when they promenade the streets named after old kings-if they forget me-the old men whose varicose veins stand more and more blue on the calves of their legs when they take their morning baths attended by old women born to the bath service of old men and young-if these old men say another King Carl should have a bronze on the king's street rather than a Fool Carl-
Then I would hurl them only another fool's laugh-
I would remember last Sunday when I stood on a jutland of fire-born red granite watching the drop of the sun in the middle of the afternoon and the full moon shining over Stockholm four o'clock in the afternoon.
If the young men will read five lines of one of my poems I will let the kings have all the bronze-I ask only that one page of my writings be a knapsack keepsake of the young men who are the bloodkin of those who laughed nine hundred years ago: We are afraid of nothing-only-the sky may fall on us.

The bagpipes blast through the open window
a marching band
a commemoration of The Battle Of Jutland
up the road, a stones throw,
the military cemetery full of dead young men.
Remembered now in solemn hearts and minds
- the mindlessness of war, the breaking of hearts
when the bagpipes stop piping, the silence.

Oh dear oh my sweet little child Rose
Picked and mumbled like a little bump on the nose
Why you deliberately infused daddy with crack
So he can sail to Jutland and never to return back

Shiny little Mustique you put her so much in danger
So that you can bump into Dickens, the anonimously ranger?
Dell the witch , always burn the *****
Never felt for a better living , but always tend to get rich

Silly kisser captain, swimming down the ocean
Battled for the monster shark to stop its motion
Soon you realized his special secret had no notion
In fact you could only realize his imaculate devotion

Vigurously you gear your sadistic attention
Towards your senile new friend, ambigous direction
Soon you start to realize your vertical tention
As soon as finally you get your proper affection.

From the dark side of the occipital ... galloping come my kind and jubilant comrades, they have been jumping and cutting the atmospheres of physical reality, after cooking my belly and my heart from stubborn wounds of unstoppable wars scary wounded slices.
Very close and dry from the dark side 3 and a half turns comes the cataract wart to the iniquity of its juice over the millions of Centilenials Writing Experiences.

On the white side of the occipital, 3 network crosses intersect with Playright Playwright, towards the hurried signs of the Writer beyond its spectrum. The soberest fear stained with bravery prosapia comes out.

 Metaphysical transfer, a capricious platform of insomniac spirit, walks 300 centuries with its feet dolled up and accommodating its semi-inclined crown sharp on its chipped shoulder of melted marble of Carrara ruin.

Preliminary Empty Transfer

Algorithm Cm, has been debating the hills like the chin of ***** maidens kneeling their outrageous non-eager emotions, neither brief as the fear frightened of releasing the beautiful vibra of the occipital color of the brave piano breaking the 300 imaginary ears of the emotion algorithm without piano of inharmonic skeptic cadaverous.

2nd transfer Preliminary Vacuum

Etrestles looks back at the Altamira wart caryatid cataract ... sees a serpentine hummingbird imbued with its sclera and grazes its feathers and the feathers ...

Later he leans to his ghostly cauliflower spectrum and returns to cross this threshold again, holding feathers in his hands saying: Since 300 centuries I have been navigating the aerial CO2 aerial ditches of the filthy world and now my brother Calamorous cauliflower prosaic ship in front of my eyes telling me If I had a brother like you, I would say come with me to cut wounded airs that I have to slice only in you lodged in the Cm Algorithm of the imagination, dietary anemia udder Holy atmosphere of the archbishop of Calixto and Calipsian blood.
When breaking the chalky limestone capita of its dimension, we will visit in this World Messiah Cauliflower. Brother of Picaflor, nodding his role Saveforest and Savespirit fraternal degeneration SOS.

3rd transverse transfer No Vacuum.
The mischievous eyes of cauliflower flying have to compensate for the world of the Cerebellum that betrays us,
That we have to be preset of spring countryside Tina Moldy.
Holy water in the jaws of ******* incense almost acunpunturial.
 
About living and surviving, of revenge and revenge ...
From Jutland the sour jerjel that shook the great extreme acro of the heraldic court for gathering thousands of restless spirits vitrineating with their hands as gamers, alpha play stationed of the severed but Sane Stoic Hamlet.

to be Continued

Next week royalty is coming to our Island
just up the road a stones throw to the military cemetery
men and lorry loads of seating and marquees
have trundled past the window these past weeks.
Everyone received an invitation I am told
I must have slung it in the bin
with all the other bin stuff that comes through the letterbox.
The royals will arrive by way of helicopter
everyone else will have to catch the ferry, make of that what you will.
It will be broadcast on BBC television on Tuesday, if I have got it right.
Of course the intrigue will get to me too much for me not to tune in.
Its all to do with the Battle Of Jutland, or more correctly all those that lost their lives there. I wonder what all those young men were thinking when they realised that they were about to die.