I Sing of my Comrades

I sing of my comrades

That once did sing

In that great choir at Albacete

Before the battle. Rank after rank

Of the young battalions

Singing the Internationale

They came from every corner of the earth

So many men from distant lands

Each with his private history

Who took to arms in the defence

Of Spain’s Republic.

Madrid the magnet that drew us all

Along slow roads to Spain – at last a star

For desperate men, sensing the gathering storm

And we that fought to warn a watching world

Were called false prophets by appeasers

Yet we fought for the poor of the world.

Our lullabies were soldiers’ songs

Dead in the mud of the trenches

Sung by sad women to the sons of the fallen.

And remembered in Remembrance Day long past

After the thudding drum and shriek of bugles

I listened to the slow lament

For brothers, sons and lovers lost.

It is the sadness in the singing,

The undertones of woe,

The deep vein of grief

That throbs throughout my generation.