In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud… but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood run upwards from the slime into its wounds; see lines and lines of British boys rewind back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home - mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers not entering the story now to die and die and die. Dulce - No - Decorum - No - Pro patria mori. You walk away. You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet) like all your mates do too - Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert - and light a cigarette. There's coffee in the square, warm French bread and all those thousands dead are shaking dried mud from their hair and queuing up for home. Freshly alive, a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings. You lean against a wall, your several million lives still possible and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food. You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile. If poetry could truly tell it backwards, then it would.

We aged a hundred years and this descended In just one hour, as at a stroke. The summer had been brief and now was ended; The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke. The hushed road burst in colours then, a soaring Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell. And so I covered up my face, imploring God to destroy me before battle fell. And from my memory the shadows vanished Of songs and passions—burdens I'd not need. The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished— A book of portents terrible to read.

Skyrocket burst of hardened steel A charming light on this fair place These technicians' tricks appeal Mixing with courage a little grace Two star shells first In rose pink burst Two breasts you lay bare with a laugh Offer their insolent tips ............HERE LIES ONE WHO COULD LOVE ..................some epitaph A poet in the forest sees Indifferent able to cope His revolver catch at safe Roses dying of their hope Thinks of Saadi's roses then Bows his head draws down his lip As a rose reminds him of The softer curving of a hip The air is full of a terrible Liquor from half shut stars distilled Projectiles stroke the soft nocturnal Perfume with your image filled Where the roses all are killed

Now everything that shadowy thought Lets peer with bedlam eyes at me From alleyways and thoroughfares Of cynic and ill memory Lifts a gaunt head, sullenly stares, Shuns me as a child has shunned A whizzing dragonfly that daps Above his mudded pond. Now bitter frosts, muffling the morn In old days, crunch the grass anew; There, where the floods made fields forlorn The glinzy ice grows thicker through, The pollards glower like mummies when Thieves pierce the long-locked pyramid, Inscrutable as those dead men With painted mask and balm-cloth hid: And all the old delight is cursed Redoubling present undelight. Splinter, crystal, splinter and burst; And sear no more with second sight.

The stage was set, the house was packed, The famous troop began; Our laughter thundered, act by act; Time light as sunbeams ran. Dance sprang and spun and neared and fled, Jest chirped at gayest pitch, Rhythm dazzled, action sped Most comically rich. With generals and lame privates both Such charms worked wonders, till The show was over - lagging loth We faced the sunset chill; And standing on the sandy way, With the cracked church peering past, We heard another matinée, We heard the maniac blast Of barrage south by Saint Eloi, And the red lights flaming there Called madness: Come, my bonny boy, And dance to the latest air. To this new concert, white we stood; Cold certainty held our breath; While men in tunnels below Larch Wood Were kicking men to death.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free. Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres. There is music in the midst of desolation And a glory that shines upon our tears. They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted, They fell with their faces to the foe. They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; They sit no more at familiar tables of home; They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; They sleep beyond England's foam. But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, To the innermost heart of their own land they are known As the stars are known to the Night. As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain, As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, To the end, to the end, they remain.

This is the song of the mud, The pale yellow glistening mud that covers the hills like satin; The grey gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel over the valleys; ….. The full text cannot currently be reproduced here for copyright reasons. Click here for the full poem available at The Poetry Foundation.

If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Early morning over Rouen, hopeful, high, courageous morning, And the laughter of adventure and the steepness of the stair, And the dawn across the river, and the wind across the bridges, And the empty littered station, and the tired people there. Can you recall those mornings and the hurry of awakening, And the long-forgotten wonder if we should miss the way, And the unfamiliar faces, and the coming of provisions, And the freshness and the glory of the labour of the day? Hot noontide over Rouen, and the sun upon the city, Sun and dust unceasing, and the glare of cloudless skies, And the voices of the Indians and the endless stream of soldiers, And the clicking of the tatties, and the buzzing of the flies. Can you recall those noontides and the reek of steam and coffee, Heavy-laden nontides with the evening’s peace to win, And the little piles of Woodbines, and the sticky soda bottles, And the crushes in the ‘Parlour’, and the letters coming in? Quiet night-time over Rouen, and the station full of soldiers, All the youth and pride of England from the ends of all the earth; And the rifles piled together, and the creaking of the sword-belts, And the faces bent above them, and the gay, heart-breaking mirth. Can I forget the passage from the cool white-bedded Aid Post Past the long sun-blistered coaches of the khaki Red Cross train To the truck train full of wounded, and the weariness and laughter, And ‘Good-bye, and thank you, Sister’, and the empty yards again? Can you recall the parcels that we made them for the railroad, Crammed and bulging parcels held together by their string, And the voices of the sergeants who called the Drafts together, And the agony and splendour when they stood to save the King? Can you forget their passing, the cheering and the waving, The little group of people at the doorway of the shed, The sudden awful silence when the last train swung to darkness, And the lonely desolation, and the mocking stars o’erhead? Can you recall the midnights, and the footsteps of night watchers, Men who came from darkness and went back to dark again, And the shadows on the rail-lines and the all inglorious labour, And the promise of the daylight firing blue the windowpane? Can you recall the passing through the kitchen door to morning, Morning very still and solemn breaking slowly on the town, And the early coastways engines that had met the ships at daybreak, And the Drafts just out from England, and the day shift coming down? Can you forget returning slowly, stumbling on the cobbles, And the white-decked Red Cross barges dropping seawards for the tide, And the search for English papers, and the blessed cool of water, And the peace of half-closed shutters that shut out the world outside? Can I forget the evenings and the sunsets on the island, And the tall black ships at anchor far below our balcony, And the distant call of bugles, and the white wine in the glasses, And the long line of the street lamps, stretching Eastwards to the sea? When the world slips slow to darkness, when the office fire burns lower, My heart goes out to Rouen, Rouen all the world away; When other men remember I remember our Adventure And the trains that go from Rouen at the ending of the day.

POET, cast your careful eye Where the beached songs of summer lie, White fell the wave that splintered The wreck where once you wintered, White as the snow that lair Your freezing hair. Captain, here you took your wine, The trees at ease in the orchard-line, Bonny the errand-boy bird Whistles the song you once heard, While you traverse the wire, Autumn will hold her fire. Through the tall wood the thunder ran As when the gibbering guns began, Swift as a murderer by the stack Crawled the canal with fingers black, Black with your brilliant blood You lit the mud. Two grey moths stare from your eyes, Sharp is your sad face with surprise. In the stirring pool I fail To see the drowned of Passchendaele, Where all day drives for me The spoiling sea.

My stretcher is one scarlet stain, And as I tries to scrape it clean, I tell you what - I'm sick of pain, For all I've heard, for all I've seen; Around me is the hellish night, And as the war's red rim I trace, I wonder if in Heaven's height Our God don't turn away his face. I don't care whose the crime may be, I hold no brief for kin or clan; I feel no hate, I only see As man destroys his brother man; I wave no flag, I only know As here beside the dead I wait, A million hearts are weighed with woe, A million homes are desolate. In dripping darkness far and near, All night I've sought those woeful ones. Dawn suddens up and still I hear The crimson chorus of the guns. Look, like a ball of blood the sun Hangs o'er the scene of wrath and wrong, "Quick! Stretcher-bearers on the run!", Oh Prince of Peace! How long, how long?"

War's wasted era is a desert shore, As know those who have passèd there, a place Where, within sound of swoll'n destruction's roar, Wheel the wild vultures, lust and terror base; Where, making ready for them, stalk the grim Barbarian forms, hunger, disease and pain, Who, slashing all life's beauty limb from limb, Crush it as folly on the stony plain. A desert: - those too who, as thou, have been Followers of war's angel, Sacrifice, (Stern striders to beyond brute torment's scene, Soarers above the swerves of fear and vice) Know that the lightning of his ghostly gaze Has wrecked for them for ever earth's small ways.

The school-bell is a call to battle, every step to class, a step into the firing-line. Here is the target, fine skin at the temple, cheek still rounded from being fifteen. Surrendered, surrounded, she takes the bullet in the head and walks on. The missile cuts a pathway in her mind, to an orchard in full bloom, a field humming under the sun, its lap open and full of poppies. This girl has won the right to be ordinary, wear bangles to a wedding, paint her fingernails, go to school. Bullet, she says, you are stupid. You have failed. You cannot kill a book or the buzzing in it. A murmur, a swarm. Behind her, one by one, the schoolgirls are standing up to take their places on the front line.

In the last letter that I had from France You thanked me for the silver Easter egg Which I had hidden in the box of apples You liked to munch beyond all other fruit. You found the egg the Monday before Easter, And said, 'I will praise Easter Monday now - It was such a lovely morning'. Then you spoke Of the coming battle and said, 'This is the eve. Good-bye. And may I have a letter soon.' That Easter Monday was a day for praise, It was such a lovely morning. In our garden We sowed our earliest seeds, and in the orchard The apple-bud was ripe. It was the eve. There are three letters that you will not get.   April 9th, 1917

I cannot quite remember...There were five Dropt dead beside me in the trench—and three Whispered their dying messages to me...' Back from the trenches, more dead than alive, Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee, He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly: 'I cannot quite remember...There were five Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three Whispered their dying messages to me... 'Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive - Waiting a word in silence patiently... But what they said, or who their friends may be 'I cannot quite remember...there were five Dropt dead beside me in the trench - and three Whispered their dying messages to me...'

Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine, Marching below, and we still gulping wine?' From the sad magic of his fragrant cup The red-faced old centurion started up, Cursed, battered on the table. 'No,' he said, 'Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion's dead, Dead in the first year of this damned campaign- The Legion's dead, dead, and won't rise again. Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die, But we need pity also, you and I, Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss, Who live to see the Legion come to this, Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot, Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot. O brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh! Where are they now? God! watch it straggle by, The sullen pack of ragged, ugly swine. Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!' 'Strabo,' said Gracchus, 'you are strange tonight. The Legion is the Legion, it's all right. If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking, Hell take it! you'll not better them by drinking. They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands. The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands, And these same men before the autumn's fall Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.'

The naked earth is warm with spring, And with green grass and bursting trees Leans to the sun's kiss glorying, And quivers in the loving breeze; And life is colour and warmth and light, And a striving evermore for these; And he is dead who will not fight; And who dies fighting has increase. The fighting man shall from the sun Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth; Speed with the light-foot winds to run, And with the trees a newer birth; And when his fighting shall be done, Great rest, and fullness after dearth. All the bright company of Heaven Hold him in their high comradeship, The Dog-Star, and the Sisters Seven, Orion's Belt and sworded hip. The woodland trees that stand together, They stand to him each one a friend; They gently speak in the windy weather, They guide to valley and ridge's end. The kestrel hovering by day, And the little owls that call by night, Bid him swift and keen as they, As keen of ear, as swift of sight. The blackbird sings to him 'Brother, brother, If this be the last song you shall sing, Sing well, for you will not sing another; Brother, sing!' In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours, Before the brazen frenzy starts, The horses show him nobler powers; O patient eyes, courageous hearts! And when the burning moment breaks, And all things else are out of mind, And only joy of battle takes Him by the throat, and makes him blind, Through joy and blindness he shall know, Not caring much to know, that still Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so That is be not the Destined Will. The thundering line of battle stands, And in the air death moans and sings; But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

There are strange hells within the minds war made Not so often, not so humiliating afraid As one would have expected – the racket and fear guns made. One hell the Gloucester soldiers they quite put out; Their first bombardment, when in combined black shout Of fury, guns aligned, they ducked low their heads And sang with diaphragms fixed beyond all dreads, That tin and stretched-wire tinkle, that blither of tune; “Apres la guerre fini” till hell all had come down, Twelve-inch, six-inch, and eighteen pounders hammering hell’s thunders. Where are they now on state-doles, or showing shop patterns Or walking town to town sore in borrowed tatterns Or begged. Some civic routine one never learns. The heart burns – but has to keep out of the face how heart burns.

He's gone, and all our plans Are useless indeed. We'll walk no more on Cotswold Where the sheep feed Quietly and take no heed. His body that was so quick Is not as you Knew it, on Severn river Under the blue Driving our small boat through. You would not know him now... But still he died Nobly, so cover him over With violets of pride Purple from Severn side. Cover him, cover him soon! And with thick-set Masses of memoried flowers - Hide that red wet Thing I must somehow forget.

Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two - Who for his hours of life had chattered through Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent; Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went, A noble fool, faithful to his stripes - and ended. But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance Of line - to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken Wires, and saw the flashes, and kept unshaken. Till the politest voice - a finicking accent, said: ‘Do you think you might crawl through, there; there's a hole;' In the afraid Darkness, shot at; I smiled, as politely replied – ‘I'm afraid not, Sir.' There was no hole, no way to be seen. Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing – And thought of music - and swore deep heart's deep oaths. (Polite to God -) and retreated and came on again. Again retreated – and a second time faced the screen.

I Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. II Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass: Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass. III Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die.

That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgement-day And sat upright. While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened hounds: The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, The worms drew back into the mounds, The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, 'No; It's gunnery practice out at sea Just as before you went below; The world is as it used to be: 'All nations striving strong to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters They do no more for Christés sake Than you who are helpless in such matters. 'That this is not the judgment-hour For some of them's a blessed thing, For if it were they'd have to scour Hell's floor for so much threatening... 'Ha, ha. It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need).' So down we lay again. 'I wonder, Will the world ever saner be,' Said one, 'than when He sent us under In our indifferent century!' And many a skeleton shook his head. 'Instead of preaching forty year,' My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, 'I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.' Again the guns disturbed the hour, Roaring their readiness to avenge, As far inland as Stourton Tower, And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

I From troubles of the world I turn to ducks, Beautiful comical things Sleeping or curled Their heads beneath white wings By water cool, Or finding curious things To eat in various mucks Beneath the pool, Tails uppermost, or waddling Sailor-like on the shores Of ponds, or paddling - Left! Right! - with fanlike feet Which are for steady oars When they (white galleys) float Each bird a boat Rippling at will the sweet Wide waterway... When night is fallen you creep Upstairs, but drakes and dillies Nest with pale water-stars, Moonbeams and shadow bars, And water-lilies: Fearful too much to sleep Since they've no locks To click against the teeth Of weasel and fox. And warm beneath Are eggs of cloudy green Whence hungry rats and lean Would stealthily suck New life, but for the mien The bold ferocious mien Of the mother-duck. II Yes, ducks are valiant things On nests of twigs and straws, And ducks are soothy things And lovely on the lake When that the sunlight draws Thereon their pictures dim In colours cool. And when beneath the pool They dabble, and when they swim And make their rippling rings, 0 ducks are beautiful things! But ducks are comical things:- As comical as you. Quack! They waddle round, they do. They eat all sorts of things, And then they quack. By barn and stable and stack They wander at their will, But if you go too near They look at you through black Small topaz-tinted eyes And wish you ill. Triangular and clear They leave their curious track In mud at the water's edge, And there amid the sedge And slime they gobble and peer Saying 'Quack! quack!' III When God had finished the stars and whirl of coloured suns He turned His mind from big things to fashion little ones; Beautiful tiny things (like daisies) He made, and then He made the comical ones in case the minds of men Should stiffen and become Dull, humourless and glum, And so forgetful of their Maker be As to take even themselves - quite seriously. Caterpillars and cats are lively and excellent puns: All God's jokes are good - even the practical ones! And as for the duck, 1 think God must have smiled a bit Seeing those bright eyes blink on the day He fashioned it. And he's probably laughing still at the sound that came out of its bill!

Killed in France 31 July 1917 The bronze soldier hitches a bronze cape That crumples stiffly in imagined wind No matter how the real winds buff and sweep His sudden hunkering run, forever craned Over Flanders. Helmet and haversack, The gun's firm slope from butt to bayonet, The loyal, fallen names on the embossed plaque -- It all meant little to the worried pet I was in nineteen forty-six or seven, Gripping my Aunt Mary by the hand Along the Portstewart prom, then round the crescent To thread the Castle Walk out to the strand. The pilot from Coleraine sailed to the coal-boat. Courting couples rose out of the scooped dunes. A farmer stripped to his studs and shiny waistcoat Rolled the trousers down on his timid shins. At night when coloured bulbs strung out the sea-front Country voices rose from a cliff-top shelter With news of a great litter - "We'll pet the runt!" - And barbed wire that had torn a friesian's elder. Francis Ledwidge, you courted at the seaside Beyond Drogheda one Sunday afternoon. Literary, sweet-talking, countrified, You pedalled out the leafy road from Slane. Where you belonged, among the dolorous And lovely: the May altar of wild flowers, Easter water sprinkled in outhouses, Mass-rocks and hill-top raths and raftered byres. I think of you in your Tommy's uniform, A haunted Catholic face, pallid and brave, Ghosting the trenches with a bloom of hawthorn Or silence cored from a Boyne passage-grave. It's summer, nineteen-fifteen. I see the girl My aunt was then, herding on the long acre. Behind a low bush in the Dardanelles You suck stones to make your dry mouth water. It's nineteen-seventeen. She still herds cows, But a big strafe puts the candles out in Ypres: 'My soul is by the Boyne, cutting new meadows... My country wears her confirmation dress.' 'To be called a British soldier while my country Has no place among nations...' You were rent By shrapnel six weeks later. 'I am sorry That party politics should divide our tents.' In you, our dead enigma, all the strains Criss-cross in useless equilibrium And as the wind tunes through this vigilant bronze I hear again the sure confusing drum You followed from Boyne water to the Balkans But miss the twilit note your flute should sound. You were not keyed or pitched like these true-blue ones Though all of you consort now underground.

The Officers’ kit and the long low limbers, The Maltese cart and the mules go by With a sparkle of paint and speckless timbers, With a glitter of steel to catch the eye; But the things I like are the four black chimneys And the smoke-tails scattering down the wind, For these are the Cookers, the Company Cookers, The cosy old Cookers that crawl behind. The Company Cooks are mired and messy, Their cheeks are black but their boots are not; The Colonel says they must be more dressy, And the General says he’ll have them shot; They hang their packs on the four black chimneys, They’re a grubby disgrace, but we don’t mind As long as the Cookers, the jolly black Cookers, The filthy old Cookers are close behind. For it’s only the Cooks can make us perky When the road is rainy and cold and steep, When the songs die down and the step gets jerky, And the Adjutant’s horse is fast asleep; And it’s bad to look back for the four black chimneys But never a feather of smoke to find, For it means that the Cookers, the crazy old Cookers, The rickety Cookers are ditched behind. The Company Cook is no great fighter And there’s never a medal for him to wear, Though he camps in the shell-swept waste, poor blighter, And many a cook has ‘copped it’ there; But the boys go over on beans and bacon, And Tommy is best when Tommy has dined, So here’s to the Cookers, the plucky old Cookers, And the sooty old Cooks that waddle behind.

April, the last full fixture of the spring: 'Feet, Scottish, feet!' – they rucked the fear of God Into Blackheath. Their club was everything: And of the four sides playing that afternoon, The stars, but also those from the back pitches, All sixty volunteered for the touring squad, And swapped their Richmond turf for Belgian ditches. October: mad for a fight, they broke too soon On the Ypres Salient, rushing the ridge between 'Witshit' and Messines.                 Three-quarters died. Of that ill-balanced and fatigued fifteen The ass selectors favoured to survive, Just one, Brodie the prop, resumed his post. The others sometimes drank to 'The Forty-Five': Neither a humorous nor an idle toast.

Mr Jenkins half inclined his head to them – he walked just barely in advance of his platoon and immediately to the left of Private Ball. He makes the conventional sign and there is the deeply inward effort of spent men who would make response for him, and take it at the double. He sinks on one knee and now on the other, his upper body tilts in rigid inclination this way and back; weighted lanyard runs out to full tether, swings like a pendulum and the clock run down. Lurched over, jerked iron saucer over tilted brow, clampt unkindly over lip and chin nor no ventaille to this darkening and masked face lifts to grope the air and so disconsolate; enfeebled fingering at a paltry strap— buckle holds, holds him blind against the morning. Then stretch still where weeds pattern the chalk predella --where it rises to his wire—and Sergeant T. Quilter takes over.

It's difficult with the weight of the rifle. Leave it--under the oak. Leave it for a salvage-bloke let it lie bruised for a monument dispense the authenticated fragments to the faithful. It's the thunder-besom for us it's the bright bough borne it's the tensioned yew for a Genoese jammed arbalest and a scarlet square for a mounted mareschal, it's that county-mob back to back. Majuba mountain and Mons Cherubim and spreaded mats for Sydney Street East, and come to Bisley for a Silver Dish. It's R.S.M. O'Grady says, it's the soldier's best friend if you care for the working parts and let us be 'av- ing those springs released smartly in Company billets on wet forenoons and clickerty-click and one up the spout and you men must really cultivate the habit of treating this weapon with the very greatest care and there should be a healthy rivalry among you--it should be a matter of very proper pride and Marry it man! Marry it! Cherish her, she's your very own. Coax it man coax it--it's delicately and ingeniously made --it's an instrument of precision--it costs us tax-payers, money--I want you men to remember that. Fondle it like a granny--talk to it--consider it as you would a friend--and when you ground these arms she's not a rooky's gas-pipe for greenhorns to tarnish. You've known her hot and cold. You would choose her from among many. You know her by her bias, and by her exact error at 300, and by the deep scar at the small, by the fair flaw in the grain, above the lower sling-swivel-- but leave it under the oak. Slung so, it swings its full weight. With you going blindly on all paws, it slews its whole length, to hang at your bowed neck like the Mariner's white oblation. You drag past the four bright stones at the turn of Wood Support. It is not to be broken on the brown stone under the gracious tree. It is not to be hidden under your failing body. Slung so, it troubles your painful crawling like a fugitive's irons.

He looked straight at Sergeant Snell enquiringly—whose eyes changed queerly, who ducked in under the low entry. John Ball would have followed, but stood fixed and alone in the little yard—his senses highly alert, his body incapable of movement or response. The exact disposition of small things—the precise shapes of trees, the tilt of a bucket, the movement of a straw, the disappearing right boot of Sergeant Snell—all minute noises, separate and distinct, in a stillness charged through with some approaching violence—registered not by the ear nor any single faculty—an on-rushing pervasion, saturating all existence; with exactitude, logarithmic, dial-timed, millesimal—of calculated velocity, some mean chemist’s contrivance, a stinking physicist’s destroying toy. He stood alone on the stones, his mess-tin spilled at his feet. Out of the vortex, rifling the air it came—bright, brass-shod, Pandoran; with all-filling screaming the howl- ing crescendo’s up-piling snapt. The universal world, breath held, one half second, a bludgeoned stillness. Then the pent violence released a consummation of all burst- ings out; all sudden up-rendings and rivings-through—all taking-out of vents—all barrier-breaking—all unmaking. Pernitric begetting—the dissolving and splitting of solid things. In which unearthing aftermath, John Ball picked up his mess-tin and hurried within; ashen, huddled, waited in the dismal straw. Behind ‘E’ Battery, fifty yards down the road, a great many mangolds, uprooted, pulped, congealed with chemical earth, spattered and made slippery the rigid boards leading to the emplacement. The sap of vegetables slobbered the spotless breech-block of No. 3 gun.

"Have you news of my boy Jack? " Not this tide. "When d'you think that he'll come back?" Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. "Has any one else had word of him?" Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide. "Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?" None this tide, Nor any tide, Except he did not shame his kind--- Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide. Then hold your head up all the more, This tide, And every tide; Because he was the son you bore, And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark; And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play Called after kings and queens, The tin advertisements For cocoa and twist, and the pubs Wide open all day; And the countryside not caring: The place-names all hazed over With flowering grasses, and fields Shadowing Domesday lines Under wheat's restless silence; The differently-dressed servants With tiny rooms in huge houses, The dust behind limousines; Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word - the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.

All the dead kings came to me At Rosnaree, where I was dreaming, A few stars glimmered through the morn, And down the thorn the dews were streaming. And every dead king had a story Of ancient glory, sweetly told. It was too early for the lark, But the starry dark had tints of gold. I listened to the sorrows three Of that Eire passed into song. A cock crowed near a hazel croft, And up aloft dim larks winged strong. And I, too, told the kings a story Of later glory, her fourth sorrow: There was a sound like moving shields In high green fields and the lowland furrow. And one said: 'We who yet are kings Have heard these things lamenting inly.' Sweet music flowed from many a bill And on the hill the morn stood queenly. And one said: 'Over is the singing, And bell bough ringing, whence we come; With heavy hearts we'll tread the shadows, In honey meadows birds are dumb.' And one said: 'Since the poets perished And all they cherished in the way, Their thoughts unsung, like petal showers Inflame the hours of blue and grey.' And one said: 'A loud tramp of men We'll hear again at Rosnaree.' A bomb burst near me where I lay. I woke, 'twas day in Picardy.

My father, let no similes eclipse Where crosses like some forest simplified Sink roots into my mind; the slow sands Of your history delay till through your eyes I read you like a book. Before you died, Re-enlisting with all the broken soldiers You bent beneath your rucksack, near collapse, In anecdote rehearsed and summarised These words I write in memory. Let yours And other heartbreaks play into my hands. Now I see close-up, in my mind's eye, The cracked and splintered dead for pity's sake Each dismal evening predecease the sun, You, looking death and nightmare in the face With your kilt, harmonica and gun, Grow older in a flash, but none the wiser (Who, following the wrong queue at The Palace, Have joined the London Scottish by mistake), Your nineteen years uncertain if and why Belgium put the kibosh on the Kaiser. Between the corpses and the soup canteens You swooned away, watching your future spill. But, as it was, your proper funeral urn Had mercifully smashed to smithereens To shrapnel shards that sliced your testicle. That instant I, your most unlikely son, In No Man's Land was surely left for dead, Blotted out from your far horizon. As your voice now is locked inside my head, I yet was held secure, waiting my turn. Finally, that lousy war was over. Stranded in France and in need of proof You hunted down experimental lovers, Persuading chorus girls and countesses: This, father, the last confidence you spoke. In my twentieth year your old wounds woke As cancer. Lodging under the same roof Death was a visitor who hung about, Strewing the house with pills and bandages, Till he chose to put your spirit out. Though they overslept the sequence of events Which ended with the ambulance outside, You lingering in the hall, your bowels on fire, Tears in your eyes, and all your medals spent, I summon girls who packed at last and went Underground with you. Their souls again on hire, Now those lost wives as recreated brides Take shape before me, materialise On the verge of light and happy legend They lift their skirts like blinds across your eyes.

From out the dragging vastness of the sea, Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous seaweed strands, He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands One moment, white and dripping, silently, Cut like a cameo in lazuli, Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands Prone in the jeering water, and his hands Clutch for support where no support can be. So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch, He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow And sandflies dance their little lives away. The sucking waves retard, and tighter clinch The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow, And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.

July 1917 We lay and ate sweet hurt-berries In the bracken of Hurt Wood. Like a quire of singers singing low The dark pines stood. Behind us climbed the Surrey hills, Wild, wild in greenery; At our feet the downs of Sussex broke To an unseen sea. And life was bound in a still ring, Drowsy, and quiet and sweet... When heavily up the south-east wind The great guns beat. We did not wince, we did not weep, We did not curse or pray; We drowsily heard, and someone said, ‘They sound clear today’. We did not shake with pity and pain, Or sicken and blanch white. We said, ’If the wind’s from over there There’ll be rain tonight’. .                .                 . Once pity we knew, and rage we knew, And pain we knew, too well, As we stared and peered dizzily Through the gates of hell. But now hell’s gates are an old tale; Remote the anguish seems; The guns are muffled and far away, Dreams within dreams. And far and far are Flanders mud, And the pain of Picardy; And the blood that runs there runs beyond The wide waste sea. We are shut about by guarding walls: (We have built them lest we run Mad from dreaming of naked fear And of black things done). We are ringed all round by guarding walls, So high, they shut the view. Not all the guns that shatter the world Can quite break through. .                 .                   . Oh, guns of France, oh, guns of France, Be still, you crash in vain... Heavily up the south wind throb Dull dreams of pain,... Be still, be still, south wind, lest your Blowing should bring the rain... We’ll lie very quiet on Hurt Hill, And sleep once again. Oh, we’ll lie quite still, nor listen nor look, While the earth’s bounds reel and shake, Lest, battered too long, our walls and we Should break...should break...

In memory of James Maxwell, 1895-1980 This photo I know best of him is him With pals of his about to take a swim, Forming a line with four of them, so five All told one afternoon, about to dive: Merseysiders, grinning and wire-thin, Still balanced, not too late to not go in, Or feint to but then teeter on a whim. The only one who turned away is him, About to live the trenches and survive, Alone, as luck would have it, of the five. Four gazing at us levelly, one not. Another pal decided on this shot, Looked down into the box and said I say And only James looked up and then away. I narrow my own eyes until they blur. In a blue sneeze of a cornfield near Flers In 1969, he went Near here It happened and he didn't say it twice. It's summer and the pool will be like ice. Five pals in Liverpool about to swim. The only one who looks away is him. The other four look steadily across The water and the joke they share to us. Wholly and coldly gone, they meet our eyes Like stars the eye is told are there and tries To see - all pity flashes back from there, Till I too am the unnamed unaware And things are stacked ahead of me so vast I sun myself in shadows that they cast: Things I dreamed but never dreamed were there, But are and may by now be everywhere, When you're what turns the page or looks away. When I'm what disappears into my day.

Will the train never start? God, make the train start. She cannot bear it, keeping up so long; and he, he no more tries to laugh at her. He is going. She holds his two hands now. Now, she has touch of him and sight of him. And then he will be gone. He will be gone. They are so young. She stands under the window of his carriage, and he stands in the window. They hold each other’s hands across the window ledge. And look and look, and know that they may never look again. The great clock of the station, - how strange it is. Terrible that the minutes go, terrible that the minutes never go. They had walked the platform for so long, up and down, and up and down- the platform, in the rainy morning, up and down, and up and down. The guard came by, calling, “Take your places, take your places.” She stands under the window of his carriage, and he stands in the window. God, make the train start! Before they cannot bear it, make the train start! God, make the train start! The three children, there, in black, with the old nurse, standing together, and looking, and looking, up at their father in the carriage window, they are so forlorn and silent. The little girl will not cry, but her chin trembles. She throws back her head, with its stiff little braid, and will not cry. Her father leans down, out over the ledge of the window, and kisses her, and kisses her. She must be like her mother, and it must be the mother who is dead. The nurse lifts up the smallest boy, and his father kisses him, leaning through the carriage window. The big boy stands very straight, and looks at his father, and looks, and never takes his eyes from him. And knows that he may never look again. Will the train never start? God, make the train start! The father reaches his hand down from the window, and grips the boy’s hand, and does not speak at all. Will the train never start? He lets the boy’s hand go. Will the train never start? He takes the boy’s chin in his hand, leaning out through the window, and lifts the face that is so young, to his. They look and look, and know that they may never look again. Will the train never start? God, make the train start!

Not yet will those measureless fields be green again Where only yesterday the wild sweet blood of wonderful youth was shed; There is a grave whose earth must hold too long, too deep a stain, Though for ever over it we may speak as proudly as we may tread. But here, where the watchers by lonely hearths from the thrust of an inward sword have more slowly bled, We shall build the Cenotaph: Victory, winged, with Peace, winged too, at the column’s head. And over the stairway, at the foot—oh! here, leave desolate, passionate hands to spread Violets, roses, and laurel, with the small sweet tinkling country things Speaking so wistfully of other Springs From the little gardens of little places where son or sweetheart was born and bred. In splendid sleep, with a thousand brothers To lovers—to mothers Here, too, lies he: Under the purple, the green, the red, It is all young life: it must break some women's hearts to see Such a brave, gay coverlet to such a bed! Only, when all is done and said, God is not mocked and neither are the dead. For this will stand in our Market-place— Who’ll sell, who’ll buy (Will you or I Lie each to each with the better grace)? While looking into every busy whore's and huckster's face As they drive their bargains, is the Face Of God: and some young, piteous, murdered face.

When the next morning eventually breaks, a young Captain climbs onto the fire step, knocks ash from his pipe then drops it still warm into his pocket, checks his watch, and places the whistle back between his lips. At 06.00 hours precisely he gives the signal, but today nothing that happens next happens according to plan. A very long and gentle note wanders away from him over the ruined ground and hundreds of thousands of dead who lie there immediately rise up, straightening their tunics before falling in as they used to do, shoulder shoulder, eyes front. They have left a space for the last recruit of all to join them: Harry Patch, one hundred and eleven years old, but this is him now, running quick-sharp along the duckboards. When he has taken his place, and the whole company are settled at last, their padre appears out of nowhere, pausing a moment in front of each and every one to slip a wafer of dry mud onto their tongues.

It begins with one or two soldiers And one or two following With hampers over their shoulders. They might be off wildfowling As they would another Christmas Day, So gingerly they pick their steps. No one seems sure of what to do. All stop when one stops. A fire gets lit. Some spread Their greatcoats on the frozen ground. Polish vodka, fruit and bread Are broken out and passed round. The air of an old German song, The rules of Patience, are the secrets They'll share before long. They draw on their last cigarettes As Friday-night lovers, when it's over, Might get up from their mattresses To congratulate each other And exchange names and addresses.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? — Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,— The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us . . . Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . . Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . . Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens. Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire, Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. What are we doing here? The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . . We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey, But nothing happens. Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow, With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew, We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance, But nothing happens. Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces— We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. —Is it that we are dying? Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there; For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs; Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,— We turn back to our dying. Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit. For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, For love of God seems dying. Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us, Shrivelling many hands, and puckering foreheads crisp. The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp, Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens.

Down the close darkening lanes they sang their way To the siding-shed, And lined the train with faces grimly gay. Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray As men's are, dead. Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp Stood staring hard, Sorry to miss them from the upland camp. Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp Winked to the guard. So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went. They were not ours: We never heard to which front these were sent; Nor there if they yet mock what women meant Who gave them flowers. Shall they return to beating of great bells In wild train-loads? A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, May creep back, silent, to village wells, Up half-known roads.

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads Which long to nuzzle in the hearts of lads. Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth, Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death. For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple. There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple; And God will grow no talons at his heels, Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

IV These fought in any case, and some believing, pro domo, in any case... Some quick to arm, some for adventure, some from fear of weakness, some from fear of censure, some for love of slaughter, in imagination, learning later... some in fear, learning love of slaughter; Died some, pro patria, non 'dulce' non 'et decor'... walked eye-deep in hell believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving came home, home to a lie, home to many deceits, home to old lies and new infamy; usury age-old and age-thick and liars in public places. Daring as never before, wastage as never before. Young blood and high blood, Fair cheeks, and fine bodies; fortitude as never before frankness as never before, disillusions as never told in the old days, hysterias, trench confessions, laughter out of dead bellies.   V There died a myriad, And of the best, among them, For an old bitch gone in the teeth, For a botched civilization, Charm, smiling at the good mouth, Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid, For two gross of broken statues, For a few thousand battered books.

I shall be mad if you get smashed about, we've had good times together, you and I; although you groused a bit when luck was out, say a girl turned us down, or we went dry. But there's a world of things we haven't done, countries not seen, where people do strange things; eat fish alive, and mimic in the sun the solemn gestures of their stone-grey kings. I've heard of forests that are dim at noon where snakes and creepers wrestle all day long; where vivid beasts grow pale with the full moon, gibber and cry, and wail a mad old song; because at the full moon the Hippogriff with crinkled ivory snout and agate feet, with his green eye will glare them cold and stiff for the coward Wyvern to come down and eat. Vodka and kvass, and bitter mountain wines we've never drunk; nor snatched the bursting grapes to pelt slim girls among Sicilian vines, who'd flicker through the leaves, faint frolic shapes. Yes, there's a world of things we've never done, but it's a sweat to knock them into rhyme, let's have a drink, and give the cards a run and leave dull verse to the dull peaceful time.

I knew a man, he was my chum, but he grew darker day by day, and would not brush the flies away, nor blanch however fierce the hum of passing shells; I used to read, to rouse him, random things from Donne - like 'Get with child a mandrake-root.' But you can tell he was far gone, for he lay gaping, mackerel-eyed, and stiff and senseless as a post even when that old poet cried 'I long to talk with some old lover's ghost.' I tried the Elegies one day, but he, because he heard me say: 'What needst thou have more covering than a man?' grinned nastily, so then I knew the worms had got his brains at last. There was one thing I still might do to starve those worms; I racked my head for wholesome lines and quoted Maud. His grin got worse and I could see he sneered at passion's purity. He stank so badly, though we were great chums I had to leave him; then rats ate his thumbs.

The darkness crumbles away. It is the same old Druid Time as ever. Only a live thing leaps my hand, A queer sardonic rat, As I pull the parapet's poppy To stick behind my ear. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Your cosmopolitan sympathies. Now you have touched this English hand You will do the same to a German Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure To cross the sleeping green between. It seems, odd thing, you grin as you pass Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, Less chanced than you for life, Bonds to the whims of murder, Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, The torn fields of France. What do you see in our eyes At the shrieking iron and flame Hurled through still heavens? What quaver—what heart aghast? Poppies whose roots are in man's veins Drop, and are ever dropping, But mine in my ear is safe - Just a little white with the dust.

Sombre the night is. And though we have our lives, we know What sinister threat lurks there. Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know This poison-blasted track opens on our camp— On a little safe sleep. But hark! joy—joy—strange joy. Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks. Music showering our upturned list'ning faces. Death could drop from the dark As easily as song— But song only dropped, Like a blind man's dream on the sand By dangerous tides, Like a girl's dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there, Or her kisses where a serpent hides.

What in our lives is burnt In the fire of this? The heart’s dear granary? The much we shall miss? Three lives hath one life – Iron, honey, gold. The gold, the honey gone – Left is the hard and cold. Iron are our lives Molten right through our youth. A burnt space through ripe fields, A fair mouth’s broken tooth.

He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls; Aqueous like floating rays of amber light, Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep. Silence and safety; and his mortal shore Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death. Someone was holding water to his mouth. He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot The opiate throb and ache that was his wound. Water-calm, sliding green above the weir. Water-a sky-lit alley for his boat, Bird- voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers And shaken hues of summer; drifting down, He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept. Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward, Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve. Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud; Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green, Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes. Rain-he could hear it rustling through the dark; Fragrance and passionless music woven as one; Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace, Gently and slowly washing life away. He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain Leapt like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs. But someone was beside him; soon he lay Shuddering because that evil thing had passed. And death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared. Light many lamps and gather round his bed. Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live. Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet. He's young; he hated War; how should he die When cruel old campaigners win safe through? But death replied: 'I choose him.' So he went, And there was silence in the summer night; Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep. Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.

We'd gained our first objective hours before While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke. Things seemed all right at first. We held their line, With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed, And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud, Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled; And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair, Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime. And then the rain began,- the jolly old rain! A yawning soldier knelt against the bank, Staring across the morning blear with fog; He wondered when the Allemands would get busy; And then, of course, they started with five-nines Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud. Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell, While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke. He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear, Sick for escape,- loathing the strangled horror And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead. An officer came blundering down the trench: 'Stand-to and man the fire-step!’ On he went... Gasping and bawling, 'Fire- step...counter-attack!' Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left; And stumbling figures looming out in front. 'O Christ, they're coming at us!' Bullets spat, And he remembered his rifle...rapid fire... And started blazing wildly...then a bang Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom, Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans... Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

Whenever war is spoken of I find The war that was called Great invades the mind: The grey militia marches over land A darker mood of grey Where fractured tree-trunks stand And shells, exploding, open sudden fans Of smoke and earth. Blind murders scythe The deathscape where the iron brambles writhe; The sky at night Is honoured with rosettes of fire, Flares that define the corpses on the wire As terror ticks on wrists at zero hour. These things I see, But they are only part Of what it is that slyly probes the heart: Less vivid images and words excite The sensuous memory And, even as I write, Fear and a kind of love collaborate To call each simple conscript up For quick inspection: Trenches' parapets Paunchy with sandbags; bandoliers, tin-hats, Candles in dug-outs, Duckboards, mud and rats. Then, like patrols, tunes creep into the mind: A long, long trail, The Rose of No Man's Land, Home Fires and Tipperary; And through the misty keening of a band Of Scottish pipes the proper names are heard Like fateful commentary of distant guns: Passchendaele, Bapaume, and Loos, and Mons. And now, Whenever the November sky Quivers with a bugle's hoarse, sweet cry, The reason darkens; in its evening gleam Crosses and flares, tormented wire, grey earth Splattered with crimson flowers, And I remember, Not the war I fought in But the one called Great Which ended in a sepia November Four years before my birth.

I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes back with rustling shade And apple-blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair. It may be he shall take my hand And lead me into his dark land And close my eyes and quench my breath— It may be I shall pass him still. I have a rendezvous with Death On some scarred slope of battered hill, When Spring comes round again this year And the first meadow-flowers appear. God knows 'twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down, Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep, Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear... But I've a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town, When Spring trips north again this year, And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous.

For years afterwards the farmers found them – the wasted young, turning up under their plough blades as they tended the land back into itself. A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade, the relic of a finger, the blown and broken bird’s egg of a skull, all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white across this field where they were told to walk, not run, towards the wood and its nesting machine guns. And even now the earth stands sentinel, reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin. This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave, a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm, their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre in boots that outlasted them, their socketed heads tilted back at an angle and their jaws, those that have them, dropped open. As if the notes they had sung have only now, with this unearthing, slipped from their absent tongues.

Via Dolorosa, Via Sacra I A straight flagged road, laid on the rough earth, A causeway of stone from beautiful city to city, Between the tall trees, the slender, delicate trees, Through the flat green land, by plots of flowers, by black canals thick with heat. II The road-makers made it well Of fine stone, strong for the feet of the oxen and of the great Flemish horses, And for the high waggons piled with corn from the harvest. But the labourers are few; They and their quiet oxen stand aside and wait By the long road loud with the passing of the guns, the rush of armoured cars and the tramp of an army on the march forward to battle; And, where the piled corn-wagons went, our dripping Ambulance carries home Its red and white harvest from the fields. III The straight flagged road breaks into dust, into a thin white cloud, About the feet of a regiment driven back league by league, Rifles at trail, and standards wrapped in black funeral cloths. Unhasting, proud in retreat, They smile as the Red Cross Ambulance rushes by. (You know nothing of beauty and of desolation who have not seen That smile of an army in retreat.) They go: and our shining, beckoning danger goes with them, And our joy in the harvests that we gathered in at nightfall in the fields; And like an unloved hand laid on a beating heart Our safety weighs us down. Safety hard and strange; stranger and yet more hard As, league after dying league, the beautiful, desolate Land, Falls back from the intolerable speed of an Ambulance in retreat On the sacred, dolorous Way.

(During a Great Battle, 1916) The floors are slippery with blood: The world gyrates too. God is good That while His wind blows out the light For those who hourly die for us – We still can dance, each night. The music has grown numb with death – But we will suck their dying breath, The whispered name they breathed to chance, To swell our music, make it loud That we may dance, – may dance. We are the dull blind carrion-fly That dance and batten. Though God die Mad from the horror of the light – The light is mad, too, flecked with blood, – We dance, we dance, each night.

1 My brother, we are divided by ill-fate and a guard: behind two hostile ramparts our death is our reward. In groaning trenches we listen to the thunder of guns: I, your enemy, you, my enemy, we face each other once. The forest weeps, the earth weeps, the whole world trembles on high. Behind two hostile ramparts we stand, you and I.   2 As soon as the guns begin to roar in the dawn, through the whistling bullets of death your sign has always shone. You throw at our low ramparts your whole artillery and you call and you speak to me: “Brother, it is I.” The forest weeps, the earth weeps, the whole world trembles on high, and all the time you say to me “Brother, it is I.”   3 Don’t think of me, my brother, as I march to my death: in the fire of my bullets stand bravely and take a deep breath. And when you see me from afar fire at me instead: into a Polish heart aim Russian lead. For I dream of her by day and see her in my dreams: She who has not died will rise where our blood screams.

When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you'll remember. For you need not so. Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know It is not curses heaped on each gashed head? Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow. Nor honour. It is easy to be dead. Say only this, 'They are dead.' Then add thereto, ‘Yet many a better one has died before.' Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you Perceive one face that you loved heretofore, It is a spook. None wears the face you knew. Great death has made all his for evermore.

All the hills and vales along Earth is bursting into song, And the singers are the chaps Who are going to die perhaps. O sing, marching men, Till the valleys ring again, Give your gladness to earth's keeping, So be glad, when you are sleeping. Cast away regret and rue, Think what you are marching to. Little live, great pass. Jesus Christ and Barabbas Were found the same day. This died, that went his way. So sing with joyful breath, For why, you are going to death. Teeming earth will surely store All the gladness that you pour. Earth that never doubts nor fears, Earth that knows of death, not tears, Earth that bore with joyful ease Hemlock for Socrates, Earth that blossomed and was glad 'Neath the cross that Christ had, Shall rejoice and blossom too When the bullet reaches you. Wherefore, men marching, On the road to death, sing! Pour your gladness on earth's head, So be merry, so be dead. From the hills and valleys earth Shouts back the sound of mirth, Tramp of feet and lilt of song Ringing all the road along. All the music of their going, Ringing swinging glad song-throwing, Earth will echo still, when foot Lies numb and voice mute. On, marching men, on To the gates of death with song. Sow your gladness for earth's reaping, So you may be glad, though sleeping. Strew your gladness on earth's bed, So be merry, so be dead.

There was a time before, when fanfares bloodily tore apart my own impatient brain, So that, up-rearing like a horse, it bit savagely at the rein. Then tambourines sounded the alarm on every path And a hail of bullets seemed like the loveliest music on earth. Then, suddenly, life stood still. Different paths were leading between the old trees. Rooms were tempting. It was sweet to linger and sweet to rest at ease, And, unchaining my body from reality, like some old dusty armour, To nestle voluptuously in the down of soft dream- hour. But then one morning through the misty air there rolled the echo of the bugle’s ring. Hard, sharp, whistling like a sword-thrust. As if suddenly on darkness lights had started shining. As if, through the tented dawn, trumpet-jolts had roused the sleeping forces, The waking soldiers leapt up and struck their tents and busily harnessed their horses. I was locked into lines like splints that thrust into morning, with fire on helmet and stirrup, Forward, with battle in my blood and in my eyes, and reins held up. Perhaps in the evening, victory marches would play around my head. Perhaps we all would lie somewhere, stretched out among the dead. But before the reaching out and before the sinking, Our eyes would see their fill of world and sun, and take it in, glowing and drinking.

Gie me a hill wi' the heather on't, An' a reid sun drappin' doon, Or the mists o' the mornin' risin' saft Wi' the reek owre a wee grey toon. Gie me a howe by the lang Glen road, For it's there 'mang the whin and fern (D'ye mind on't, Will? Are ye hearin', Dod?) That we're biggin' the Soldiers' Cairn. Far awa’ is the Flanders land Wi' fremmit France atween, But mony a howe o' them baith the day Has a hap o' the Gordon green. It's them we kent that's lyin' there, An' it's nae wi' stane or airn But wi' brakin' herts, an' mem'ries sair, That we're biggin' the Soldiers' Cairn. Doon, laich doon the Dullan sings— An' I ken o' an aul' sauch tree, Where a wee loon's wahnie's hingin' yet That's dead in Picardy; An' ilka win' fae the Conval's broo Bends aye the buss o' ern, Where aince he futtled a name that noo I'll read on the Soldiers' Cairn. Oh! build it fine and build it fair, Till it leaps to the moorland sky — More, more than death is symbolled there, Than tears or triumphs by. There's the Dream Divine of a starward way Our laggard feet would learn— It's a new earth's corner-stone we'd lay As we fashion the Soldiers' Cairn. …………………………… Lads in your plaidies lyin' still In lands we'll never see, This lanely cairn on a hameland hill Is a' that oor love can dee; An' fine an' braw we'll mak' it a', But oh, my Bairn, my Bairn, It’s a cradle’s croon that’II aye blaw doon     To me fae the Soldiers' Cairn.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild-plum trees in tremulous white; Robins will wear their feathery fire, Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire; And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone.

I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose. Many a road and track That, since the dawn's first crack, Up to the forest brink, Deceived the travellers, Suddenly now blurs, And in they sink. Here love ends, Despair, ambition ends; All pleasure and all trouble, Although most sweet or bitter, Here ends in sleep that is sweeter Than tasks most noble. There is not any book Or face of dearest look That I would not turn from now To go into the unknown I must enter and leave, alone, I know not how. The tall forest towers; Its cloudy foliage lowers Ahead, shelf above shelf; Its silence I hear and obey That I may lose my way And myself.

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me cleaner than I have been Since I was born into this solitude. Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: But here I pray that none whom once I loved Is dying tonight or lying still awake Solitary, listening to the rain, Either in pain or thus in sympathy Helpless among the living and the dead, Like a cold water among broken reeds, Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, Like me who have no love which this wild rain Has not dissolved except the love of death, If love it be towards what is perfect and Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

I love roads: The goddesses that dwell Far along invisible Are my favourite gods. Roads go on While we forget, and are Forgotten like a star That shoots and is gone. On this earth 'tis sure We men have not made Anything that doth fade So soon, so long endure: The hill road wet with rain In the sun would not gleam Like a winding stream If we trod it not again. They are lonely While we sleep, lonelier For lack of the traveller Who is now a dream only. From dawn's twilight And all the clouds like sheep On the mountains of sleep They wind into the night. The next turn may reveal Heaven: upon the crest The close pine clump, at rest And black, may Hell conceal. Often footsore, never Yet of the road I weary, Though long and steep and dreary As it winds on for ever. Helen of the roads, The mountain ways of Wales And the Mabinogion tales Is one of the true gods, Abiding in the trees, The threes and fours so wise, The larger companies, That by the roadside be, And beneath the rafter Else uninhabited Excepting by the dead: And it is her laughter At morn and night I hear When the thrush cock sings Bright irrelevant things, And when the chanticleer Calls back to their own night Troops that make loneliness With their light footsteps' press, As Helen's own are light. Now all roads lead to France And heavy is the tread Of the living; but the dead Returning lightly dance: Whatever the road bring To me or take from me, They keep me company With their pattering, Crowding the solitude Of the loops over the downs, Hushing the roar of towns And their brief multitude.

At evening the autumnal forests resound With deadly weapons, the golden plains And blue lakes, above them the sun Rolls more darkly by; night enfolds The dying warriors, the wild lament Of their broken mouths. But in the grassy vale the spilled blood, Red clouds in which an angry god lives, Gathers softly, lunar coldness; All roads lead to black decay. Beneath the golden boughs of night and stars The sister’s shadow reels through the silent grove To greet the ghosts of heroes, their bleeding heads; And the dark flutes of autumn sound softly in the reeds. O prouder sorrow! you brazen altars Today an immense anguish feeds the mind’s hot flame, The unborn descendants.

France, March 1916.   Over the top! The wire’s thin here, unbarbed Plain rusty coils, not staked, and low enough: Full of old tins, though — “When you’re through, all three, Aim quarter left for fifty yards or so, Then straight for that new piece of German wire; See if it’s thick, and listen for a while For sounds of working; don’t run any risks; About an hour; now, over!” And we placed Our hands on the topmost sand-bags, leapt, and stood A second with curved backs, then crept to the wire, Wormed ourselves tinkling through, glanced back, and dropped. The sodden ground was splashed with shallow pools, And tufts of crackling cornstalks, two years old, No man had reaped, and patches of spring grass. Half-seen, as rose and sank the flares, were strewn With the wrecks of our attack: the bandoliers, Packs, rifles, bayonets, belts, and haversacks, Shell fragments, and the huge whole forms of shells Shot fruitlessly — and everywhere the dead. Only the dead were always present — present As a vile sickly smell of rottenness; The rustling stubble and the early grass, The slimy pools — the dead men stank through all, Pungent and sharp; as bodies loomed before, And as we passed, they stank: then dulled away To that vague fœtor, all encompassing, Infecting earth and air. They lay, all clothed, Each in some new and piteous attitude That we well marked to guide us back: as he, Outside our wire, that lay on his back and crossed His legs Crusader-wise; I smiled at that, And thought on Elia and his Temple Church. From him, at quarter left, lay a small corpse, Down in a hollow, huddled as in bed, That one of us put his hand on unawares. Next was a bunch of half a dozen men All blown to bits, an archipelago Of corrupt fragments, vexing to us three, Who had no light to see by, save the flares. On such a trail, so lit, for ninety yards We crawled on belly and elbows, till we saw Instead of lumpish dead before our eyes, The stakes and crosslines of the German wire. We lay in shelter of the last dead man, Ourselves as dead, and heard their shovels ring Turning the earth, then talk and cough at times. A sentry fired and a machine-gun spat; They shot a glare above us, when it fell And spluttered out in the pools of No Man’s Land, We turned and crawled past the remembered dead: Past him and him, and them and him, until, For he lay some way apart, we caught the scent Of the Crusader and slid past his legs, And through the wire and home, and got our rum.