Funeral Music 2, by Geoffrey Hill

2

For whom do we scrape our tribute of pain –    

For none but the ritual king? We meditate   

A rueful mystery; we are dying

To satisfy fat Caritas, those

Wiped jaws of stone. (Suppose all reconciled   

By silent music; imagine the future

Flashed back at us, like steel against sun,   

Ultimate recompense.) Recall the cold

Of Towton on Palm Sunday before dawn,   

Wakefield, Tewkesbury; fastidious trumpets   

Shrilling into the ruck; some trampled   

Acres, parched, sodden or blanched by sleet,

Stuck with strange-postured dead. Recall the wind’s   

Flurrying, darkness over the human mire.

Source of the text - Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012. Oxford University Press, 2013.

TJB: Why fight—&, separate question, why write? In a sonnet of dactyls & anapests, soldiers discuss great battles as pointless, swampy farces.