Endless days' relentless bombardment laid the Somme landscape waste;
Shells by the million, a devastating deathly doom-laden din,
Craters filled with rotting bodies, men and horses,
United in indifferent, undifferentiated bestial meaninglessness;
And the helpless soldiers sang and prayed in the company of the dead.
If there were, if there really were, a god in bloody Heaven,
Surely he would have bent a holy ear, opened his holy eyes?
But no, in his divine wisdom he let it all happen.
Free will, old boy, don't you know?

And so, between July and November 1916
Over a million of his children were crucified
In five long blood-stained months - for nothing,
For meaningless political squabbles.
And the remnants of those two sad armies,
Together with their young brothers not yet called to the colours
Had another two years of Hell to endure
Before the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month
And how poetic a choice of timing that was.

And the killing has never stopped, nor ever will
While mankind breathes, and until the Earth itself dies.
At least, together with God's loving viruses and caring cancers,
It serves to keep population growth down slightly
Which could well be his cunning plan.