In Flanders Fields II

In Flanders Fields the cannons blow
young men apart, both friend and foe.
Such cries are heard when young men die
that poets like McCrae must lie.
The public cannot ever know

how much we wept; how days ago
we begged them not to make us go
over the top and now we lie
in Flanders Fields.

Like snails under a hammer blow
our shells were crushed. That constant flow
of shrieking boys, none knowing why
their mothers packed them off to die,
were absent from McCrae’s rondeau
‘In Flanders Fields’.