To A Nightingale
I was born in a soulless heart of a city:
Where mean streets wander in grey confusion.
I've watched men struggle without any pity
Or felt the need to help any man -
It was dog eat dog in my neighborhood,
No farmstead, bower or country lane,
No beast or bird or churchyard stood
To hide the shame of my own backyard.
Life had no beauty, but fear and sweat.
We held the line at the outermost ring,
And all about us was death and defeat.
We held the line as the others poured through
For a place on the crowded Dunkirk beach.
Their only thought was to get far away,
Out of the Stukka and Spandaus reach.
Out to this hell to Englands green shore.
Night had come and I lay on my back
In a silent, shell shocked, Belgian field.
In my mind and in my head I saw only black
When I heard a noise I could not believe.
It burst like a bomb on my aching brain,
Like a fountain sweet in an arid land
And it filled my empty soul again.
"The nightingale's back", a comrad said.
Can the call of a bird affect your life?
Can it show you the world isn't always grey?
It can, and it did in my world of strife.
It lifted me out of the trough of despair.
And when God calls, as He will quite soon,
My "lost chord" that I hope to hear
Is the nightingale's call neath a silver moon
That has kept me sane this many a year.
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The Shangani Patrol
On the banks of the wide Shangani,
Neath a dark and leaden sky,
In a glade of green mopani
A patrol went forth to die.
They crossed the rising river
On the trail of wayward Chief,
With orders to reconnoitre
And the coloumn would bring relief.
They thought they were trailing a section;
But there in the morning light,
Was the bulk of the rebel nation;
So they withdrew in a running fight.
Although they were desperately few,
Outnumbered a hundred to one.
They voted on what they should do,
To stand by their wounded, or run.
With no Maxims, only issue Martinis,
As the warriors came like a flood,
They turned to face the impis,
And the earth was drenched in blood.
Surrounded, outnumbered, abandoned,
They sang of a faraway Queen.
But they held their ground to the very end
and the grass was red that was green.
The Matabele said, "they were men of men"
And unmolested the bodies lay
As the shadows began to lengthen
At the close of an epic day.
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