Let There Be Light! Ruth Wright Kauffman
in The Red Cross Magazine
Permission to reproduce in this book
BLACK with the blackness of hell and despair
Village and village and village lay there;
Never a candle and never a lamp—
Four hundred miles of the enemies’ camp.
Trains of munitions that creak with their loads,
Supplies, horses, soldiers engulfed by the roads;
An ambulance crawling, a password, and then
Through the shell-shattered houses the marching of men.
Black with the blackness of wounds and of death
The villages huddled there holding their breath;
Black—till there rang this new order to “Cease”—
“It is over!—all over!—the war!—there is peace!
Come, dance on the ruins—Look, No Man’s Land there,
“Verboten” for years, is a world’s thoroughfare;
And village and village, remember the night,
But turn it to day—and let there be light.
The sorrow unburied, destruction—how much!
Four hundred long miles for the taper to touch!
The shades are undrawn, the lamps shining bright;
It is dawn in the darkness; again There Is Light!