JB Salmond’s lines are poignant in their simplicity. They are in the forthcoming new anthology, Beneath Troubled Skies: Poems of Scotland at War, 1914-1918, compiled and edited by Lizzie MacGregor, with commentaries by Yvonne McEwen and a foreword by Sir Hew Strachan (Polygon, £12.99).

POPPIES

No great triumphal march

For lads like you;

No pasteboard victory arch,

No grand review.

In working raiment brown

You gave your best;

Then laid you weary down,

And took your rest.

But the great kindly earth,

That hid your face,

Gave all your triumph birth

Beside your resting-place.

The poppy armies blaze

Red in the holy loam,

And the lark's music plays

The victors home.