What still remains
We marched beneath your shining leaves once
With others now we barely know
And stories, kicked in dirt, they made us.
Cratered drops on earth below
Busy, making fire from benches
Throwing knives between our legs
We didn’t care to see your branches
Or stop to know your furrowed twigs
But still we came, and drank from tin cups
Scheming now within your shade
Of yet more plans to throw a camp up
But these things happen, these things fade
Yes, boys at first, stretched out in tents
Then, as men, we moved away.
To find ourselves a new excitement.
Important now. Too wise to play
Years passed and somehow families started
Remained your roots, ‘round memories wound
The boy who stood, then stayed, departed
Left something there in your spiked ground
So, beneath a thousand spreading arches
I tried that marching stride again
Hoped for modern, quick catharsis
To quell the pace. Restart the game
I forgot the way I trod it last
Up through the wood? Left at the lane?
Paths in my mind seemed long-since grassed
But old Sweet Chestnut, you remain
Old Sweet Chestnut, you remain