Deep in my head I came to Towton;

Inconspicuous field of multimurder,

Where on Palm Sunday 1461,

All day, madmen chopped and speared

In blizzard, for love of a rose.

They crossed the river at the cooling towers,

Where slipper barges carrying coal

Are tidied against the power station;

It was not travelling weather;

Knights playing at war,

Predjudice emblazoned arm and shield,

Urged fellow-primates at the peak of evolution

To mash neighbour's brains with leaden mallets.

They came across that river

Polluted since with everything,

But then with nothing but blood;

They crossed the dual carriage-way,

It was a bitter Easter, late,

To be killed in thousands

So that a small cross could be placed

Beside a minor road.

Within the museum calm of this little valley,

Birds of carrion queued for warriors;

Couldn’t this Sunday have been remembered

Because it snowed?

War, like love, puts under the microscope

Some undistinguished bush that shelters it,

On that day, snowflakes stained with blood,

Were magnified to obscure horror.

In a way, it is saddest,

Not that son killed father,

Or friend killed friend,

But saddest, that as usual,

Men killed

In the heat of an irrelevant moment .