The Poet Dreams of Blodeuwedd
for Francis Ledwidge (1887-1917)

He dreamed of her, the woman made of flowers,
someplace near Ypres, beneath the bombs.
She walked in trenches that were also tombs
and like a linnet sang through endless hours
of mud and muck and death. Where she would pass,
her footprints left a trail of meadow-sweet
and yellow broom, and small white marguerite.
He smelled them until someone shouted “Gas!”
And when night came, she flew above the field
of battle like an owl that has no song,
while silently she gathered all the dead
within her wings. He knew that before long
he too would lie upon her feathered breast
and finally, beneath the poppies, rest.

(The image is A Young Lady by Elisabeth Sonrel.)