2003 School Magazine

ORIGINAL W o R K S

Land of Unmarked Graves I look out upon the marvellous landscape spread before me, A rich carpet of lush green downs Rolling hills traversed by wandering dry stone walls Coated in mosses and lichens, The weathered rocks cold to touch, Yet warm from the history of four hundred summe Eternal ised in memory The patchwork blanket of fields, bright green and ye Brown tilled earth and golden wheat, Beckons to the walkers' feet. The dark scattered copses inviting with their shady secrets For now my perspective changes, and I see this landscap Not through the eyes of a hiker, the modern historian, But with the gaze of a Young child, Staring out of the farmhouse's windows All those centuries ago No longer fertile and green the earth, No more fresh and clean the air The stench of death looms on the breeze And way upon the nearest peak, A grassy plateau, once so calm, The battle rages. Green to red Shrieks of the dying and injured, Man and steed alike, crumbling under cannon fire, A slash of heavy sword Young-men, to my mind Yet boys, Fighting for the right to live in peace Some went readily, martyrs to the cause, Others did not know the reason, following the crowd And now as I stand and imagine, An observer separated from their lives by the barrier of ti I wonder Who will ever mourn for them, these souls without their names? No tombs have they, no monument upon this earth, Secrets

Sculptu re Michelle Collishaw 11 Lilley

^^^^^^.

And our crops grown from their rotting bones I will remember them, faceless as they are,

And though I cannot free them all, Abandoned souls in unmarked graves,

They will take comfort in the thoughts, if thought there is in darkness, That one of the living remembers, beyond the leaf of the textbook, The figures on the page, They will have a place in my heart

Shona Gray 10 0'Connor The Mary Alexis Macmillan Prize Winner for Years 9 - 10,2003

Sculptu re Katherine Dick I I Lilley