Gallipoli art prize 2023

The Last to Leave 2023 oil on linen

Selected finalist in The Gallipoli Art Prize 2023. Inspired by the poem ‘The Last To Leave’ by Leon Gellert (1892-1977), an Australian soldier, poet, journalist and combatant at Gallipoli.

The last to leave

The guns were silent, and the silent hills
had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze
I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,
And whispered, ‘What of these?’ and “What of these?’
These long forgotten dead with sunken graves,
Some crossless, with unwritten memories
Their only mourners are the moaning waves,
Their only minstrels are the singing trees
And thus I mused and sorrowed wistfully

I watched the place where they had scaled the height,
The height whereon they bled so bitterly
Throughout each day and through each blistered night
I sat there long, and listened – all things listened too
I heard the epics of a thousand trees,
A thousand waves I heard; and then I knew
The waves were very old, the trees were wise:
The dead would be remembered evermore-
The valiant dead that gazed upon the skies,
And slept in great battalions by the shore.

Leon Gellert (Songs from a campaign 1917)