I hear you singing a song
a Carol if I’m not mistaken,
I listen…
you hear me singing a song
a Carol you hear
back to you in response…
a harmony
to your distant melody
a canticle
nothing too fanciful,
framed in silence
now but for
our voices
we are one and all
cloaked and cossetted
by night
disembodied tones
drift as though
they belong
and always have done so,
our voices
casting every line
across the front-line
into no-man’s land
to land upon the other side,
beyond the trenches
and the sandbags
and the barbed wire coils
winking in the moonlight,
after the shells
and the live fire
have all at once become
conspicuous by absence,
a silent night to you
a silent night to me
for as long
as there are verses
we are no more
fearful adversaries.
© 2018 robert greig
