In Ypres (Ieper) look upon the gables, rooftops and walls…there are reminders here.
P. Ferguson image, August 2018.
Reminders
After the war…each day’s new peace is punctuated by the craggy and weighted fragments of former ambition and rubble. Once these were buildings…these were homes. The exclamations, and pauses, the commas, the full stops of life.
With each day a small section of peace is renewed as foundation is revealed…the rebuilding continues. Brick by brick, stone by stone, breath to breath…the people reclaim their spaces, their places. There was war once here…the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine gun replaced by the tat-a-tat-tat of the stone mason’s hammer and chisel. The war continues each day, the staccato of steel…as stone chips fall…year by year. These are the signs 1 9 2 1 1 9 2 2 1 9 2 3. Read them here at Ypres, hear them from their walls, their rooftops, their gables. This is their chorus of rebirth. These are reminders of war.
At Ypres they came…the pilgrims and people knew they would come…to find their loves, their sons and daughters, their families caught by this land. They came soon…on their own or with help…St. Barnabas… the YMCA…the British War Graves Commission…the Salvation Army…the Church Army…a father…a mother…family in search of their love…their kin amidst this soil, forever sacred, forever light. The darkness shall not find them.
And here amongst the foundations a new stone is placed. There will be a new beginning, building or home…as pilgrims wander, fallen fragments. These are reminders of war.
Previously published Pipes of War website, 28 October 2019