The winner of the 2014 Leonardo Poetry Prize, awarded on Wednesday, 2nd July, is Sam Kent for his poem, 'A Truly Great Grandfather':
Peace lies in
every direction: the compass spins.
A glorious
peace, twinned with booming faith.
Stars of David
hang in the night sky
After a golden
sunset caresses the day to sleep.
The aftermath of
the Great War lingers
countries
clustered, count their pennies.
Up from the
ashes emerges a German seraph,
A beacon of
hope. Of goodness. Hitler.
An angel not,
but a minion of the Devil,
Wielding the
reins of Germany,
Corrupting eyes
with his already corrupted. Ind,
Breathing life
into his ideas of death
Marching seas
of grey fill town squares,
Hung from the
strings of the master puppeteer
Like a tumour,
spreading across the breaking body of Europe
Her hanging
stars ripped from their hooks and burned.
He couldn't
stay there, twixt broken bones and minds.
He left for
England. All he took was his faith.
Eluding
patrolling eyes, and Hitler's thunder rumbling in the sky,
Stern and bow
finally adrift for English shores.
Moored in Kent,
he take the name for his own.
Not as a mask
for his refugee face.
"British
men for the British Army". So, British he became
And took to the
skies to face the thunder he once fled.
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