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Mary Smith is a poet, novelist and journalist living in the south west of Scotland and working in both English and Scots. She spent ten years working in Pakistan and Afghanistan on various health projects including leprosy, tuberculosis control and mother and child health. During this time she began writing articles about life in Afghanistan for newspapers including The Herald and Guardian Weekly. She returned to Scotland in 1996, completing an Honours degree followed by an M

memorial (passchendaele 100)
bugle notes intone
the hundred millionth earthly post commemorating
how easily
men who would not wish to
be enemies
become
cannon fodder
in the cause of power muddied and bloodied and mostly youthful
conscripted or seduced by words untruthful
lambs slaughtering lambs as they are slaughtered
all as ordered, all as ordered dignitaries come
from ivory towers commemorating
hundreds of
thousands of mud-swamped
casualties
sacrificed a hundred days under boot