Gilbert Vandaele

The scars of Flanders Fields

Crater-shaped trenches, gullies and mounds of earth, churned up and peppered by a million bullets
their maddening whistle mixing with the whizz-bang of exploding bombs and grenades
grotesque
mangled iron, splintered wood, trees beheaded to stumps
landscape redrawn into a pale, desolate no-man’s-land
Gas attack!
Yelling and shouting... run, run with the wind,
gas -the silent killer- is sneaking over the land
Sheltering men in holes and ditches, jumping in or out, coughing, eyes blinded by tears
suffocated until Death strikes… the dying
their blood sucked up by the earth from ten thousand bodies
falling under a shower of bullets, bombs, grenades, gas
then the injured or dead - groaning or silent - too silent
turn red this brown ground
red - the colour of Death - red for dead
for ever leaving scars in Flanders Fields.

Tekst: VéGé/vertaling: Bertin Deneire