Chevauchee
Dead for a chicken,
Murder most fowl
Two big men encased in blood rage
And metal heavier than morality
Hold back the arms of the struggling farmer
While a third drives iron into his belly
Split like a poussin
Spinning on a spit
the sharp point of a pointless war
Spatchcocked, split and despatched
Liberally larded with farm yard mud
Basted with his own hot blood
Returning home to roost
Dead for a chicken
Dead for nothing
Dead for something
After all
You can’t roast valour with onions
Nor stuff love of country with rosemary
On make soup the next day
Out of the carcass of faith
They laugh these men of honour
These brave boys of war
At the peasant who
rushed to protect the roost
Full of indignation and choler
As they put his chicken shed to the fire
A common place brutality as lords of land
Fight over the heads of their subjects
Subjecting them to horror
A punishment meted out by princes
To force a lesson on kings
That peasant pawns and play things
Can be broken, scattered across the floor
Playthings in this war of vanity
A hundred years absent of humanity
‘you have no right …;
but muscle and might
show chivalry only to their own kind
‘You can’t do that ..
But of course they could
And can, and will and do
And will do so still.
Is it worth dying for a chicken
Not for rulers, not for England or France,
just for home and hearth
for dignity and defiance ?
not for his cowering, freshly widowed wife
not for these unaccustomed orphans
grieving , still fearful for home and life
certainly not for the chickens
cindered before their allotted span
led fate to ring their neck and put them in a pan.
But perhaps, yes
Amid the smoke, a rosemary tang is in the air,
Almost tasting of rebellion,
To honour the remembrance
Of a farmer and his flock.
I've been listening to a podcast (Yes there are other podcasts) about the years after the Norman invasion. All of this rings so true and was perfectly acceptable to the so-called chivalrous. I love the cooking theme throughout. Food is so important. The denial of food and other aid to innocents as a potent weapon of war between the ruling classes is as old as time.
Powerful and beautifully written.
It seems strange to 'like' something so grim, but our histories are filled with the worst of humanity, with occasional candles of light seeping through the gloom. I suppose our savageries of today are sometimes better hidden, more subtle or discreet but no less vile - and Gaza shows more bare-faced than most. Words are one weapon we can all use for good or ill. The scent of herbs hopefully hangs in the air longer than the immediate violence - some kind of incense when we are incensed!
A poem of.violence to man fowl and flock, war is always there, somewhere. well.done Mark.