Poppies for a Glass Eye

This poem was first published in the Oxford House Industrial History Society and Risca Museum newsletter.

Poppies for a Glass Eye

I come from a long line of inventors
Or at least a few tinkerers, I think
My lineage is dappled with long hours
spent scheming in the shed,
dreaming in the garage,
convening ideas into the next greatest thing

My great-uncle was a jeweller,
Who sent his boys down to the pit
One day a man came to the house and proposed:
Train as an optician, trade the dark depths of the mine
For a life helping other see the light
The tenacious brother, Wilf, agreed to learn the craft

The men fought abroad in the first mechanized, industrial war
Tanks pushing through enemy lines
Trucks carrying troops with machine guns
Field radios and telephones, and photos from the sky
Of those that returned, some were shell shocked,
Or missing a limb, others had lost an eye

It was the miracle of medical inventions
New surgery techniques, hospitals in the fields
That brought men home, blasted by rockets
Full of shrapnel, but miraculously alive
Wounded and weary, self conscious and ravaged
But breathing and lucky and home once again

Wilfred turned glass into unseeing eyes
FIlling the sockets gouged in the trench
Matching men’s browns, blues, hazels and greens
From Abercarn to Newport, masking scars
For a handful of the hundreds of thousand of Welshmen who fought
From West Flanders to the Somme