Tread Softly

British and Turkish authorities describe an inconceivable and tampering with British cemeteries on Gallipoli if the Dardanelles are refortified.

We will tread softly where these warriors sleep.
Out of a past of tortured memories
Comes to us urgently desire to keep
An everlasting armistice with these
Mute victims of a deadly war-time hate
Wed, for destruction, to a deadlier fear.
Now, what remains must stand inviolate;
We will tread softly, reverently here.

We will speak quietly as we pass by
These quiet ones who fell in the grim game.
With heads bowed down and part averted eye
For that we feel a vague, uneasy shame
That they so strangely sleep; for if they stirred
To question us and ask why they were here,
We could not answer, nor find any word
To fit that frenzied hour of hate and fear.

We will gaze mutely and with meet respect,
With all the gentleness sane men must feel,
Upon the hallowed places where they rest—
Young bodies riven by the shattering steel
Our hands had sped, when we were less than sane.
We will tread softly, lest they should awake—
To know again man’s folly and the pain—
These tragic victims of a Great Mistake.

We will tread softly—even tho’ once more
The marching millions all our wide earth shake,
And all the dreadful panoply of war
Now heralds yet another Great Mistake.
But, when the thunders of war’s loud career
Again be spent in silences more deep
About red earth’s last ruin—never fear;
Men will tread softly, brothers, where we sleep.