Pastures green, poppy fields,
graves for soldiers fallen.
A wooden cross marks a resting place,
a thousand miles from loved ones.

Rusted wire, silent guns,
trenches torn and broken.
A helmet rests on a rifle butt,
the tools of war unspoken.

Anzac Days, colours blaze,
their battle honours borne on.
Old men march and a bugle plays,
in memory of the fallen.

© Mike Subritzky
Read by Lord Freyberg at the Westminster Abbey ANZAC Day Service, London, 2004. The first New Zealand poem read in Westminster Abbey