Beattie, Simon - A Remembrance

Composer's note
I wrote the words here in 2014, for a local poetry competition. A few years later, I decided to set them for a concert I was involved in to mark the centenary of the First World War. The piece is dedicated to the memory of Sydney Lacey, a local Buckinghamshire man who emigrated to Australia in the early 1910s only to return to Europe in 1915 where he died, along with about 5500 other Australians, on the Western Front, at the Battle of Fromelles. His name is engraved on Chesham war memorial, which I walk past almost every day.

Text
The flow of men four years before turns
Trickle
Coming back
To town and village
Lives worn thin
With worry
Loved ones wait.

Strange arrivals these,
These boys brought up too soon
To witness horror there, now
Coming back
To town and village, where
Life wears on.
Their fate:

Man memorials.
Grey faces,
Grave looks
For the living.
Grey stone,
Graven names
For the dead.

Arrivals
by Simon Beattie

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