Exhumus: poem for fallen Australian WWI heroes

I received the following email from Annie Kemp in the UK today, and it’s well worth passing on in full:

Today 5th May 2009, in a field in Fromelles, France forensic scientists are disinterring the bodies of fallen Australian heroes of WW1, there will never be ‘an unknown’ soldier, and I wrote these lines to commemorate this extraordinary event

Exhumus

Exhumator, ceremoniously you waken us
Gone so long, back in World War One
Sorrow, yes, but no forced air of solemnity
Take us up gently – bones of the unreturning,
Doomed but valiant knaves
Shelled hideously, intermingled in French mud.
Probe for mates, collate and light us
Twenty first century, DNA and type me
Photo, blog and net me
Kith and kin trace and verify me
Name, claim and honour my youth
Forget not, why we came here, back in World War One
Exhumator, when you’ve done,
Go against your trade and reinterre me.

By A. Kemp May 2009.