Five empty chairs

Five empty chairs
an open book
a white-grey-black image
of a broken church

Who sit on the seats
staring out at you
as you leaf through
the book's heavy pages

Not all are there
in its Times Roman print
other hands have added
the names of so many

Echoes abound
in that soundless room
of war and strife
at sea and on land

One chair is missing
perhaps unwittingly;
the War did not end
when guns fell silent

1919 was another year
in which the Great War
claimed lives
205 - at the Beasts of Holm