Some Desperate Glory (20 page)

His dark hearing caught our far wheels,

And the choked soul stretched weak hands

To reach the living word the far wheels said,

The blood-dazed intelligence beating for light,

Crying through the suspense of the far torturing wheels

Swift for the end to break,

Or the wheels to break,

Cried as the tide of the world broke over his sight.

 

Will they come? Will they ever come?

Even as the mixed hoofs of the mules,

The quivering-bellied mules,

And the rushing wheels all mixed

With his tortured upturned sight,

So we crashed round the bend,

We heard his weak scream,

We heard his very last sound,

And our wheels grazed his dead face.

I
SAAC
R
OSENBERG

 

 

The General

‘Good-morning, good-morning!' the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line.

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,

And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

‘He's a cheery old card,' grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

 

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

S
IEGFRIED
S
ASSOON

 

 

Returning, We Hear the Larks

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 dreams 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.

I
SAAC
R
OSENBERG

 

 

Sergeant-Major Money

It wasn't our battalion, but we lay alongside it,

      So the story is as true as the telling is frank.

They hadn't one Line-officer left, after Arras,

      Except a batty major and the Colonel, who drank.

 

‘B' Company Commander was fresh from the Depot,

      An expert on gas drill, otherwise a dud;

So Sergeant-Major Money carried on, as instructed,

      And that's where the swaddies began to sweat blood.

 

His Old Army humour was so well-spiced and hearty

      That one poor sod shot himself, and one lost his wits;

But discipline's maintained, and back in rest-billets

      The Colonel congratulates ‘B' Company on their kits.

 

The subalterns went easy, as was only natural

      With a terror like Money driving the machine,

Till finally two Welshmen, butties from the Rhondda,

      Bayoneted their bugbear in a field-canteen.

 

Well, we couldn't blame the officers, they relied on Money;

      We couldn't blame the pitboys, their courage was grand;

Or, least of all, blame Money, an old stiff surviving

      In a New (bloody) Army he couldn't understand.

R
OBERT
G
RAVES

 

 

To Any Dead Officer

Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you'd say,

Because I'd like to know that you're all right.

Tell me, have you found everlasting day,

Or been sucked in by everlasting night?

For when I shut my eyes your face shows plain;

I hear you make some cheery old remark –

I can rebuild you in my brain,

Though you've gone out patrolling in the dark.

 

You hated tours of trenches; you were proud

Of nothing more than having good years to spend;

Longed to get home and join the careless crowd

Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend.

That's all washed out now. You're beyond the wire:

No earthly chance can send you crawling back;

You've finished with machine-gun fire –

Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.

 

Somehow I always thought you'd get done in,

Because you were so desperate keen to live:

You were all out to try and save your skin,

Well knowing how much the world had got to give.

You joked at shells and talked the usual ‘shop,'

Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:

With ‘Jesus Christ! when
will
it stop?

Three years … It's hell unless we break their line.'

 

So when they told me you'd been left for dead

I wouldn't believe them, feeling it
must
be true.

Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said

‘Wounded and missing' – (That's the thing to do

When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow,

With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache,

Moaning for water till they know

It's night, and then it's not worth while to wake!)

 

Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God,

And tell Him that our Politicians swear

They won't give in till Prussian Rule's been trod

Under the Heel of England … Are you there?…

Yes … and the War won't end for at least two years;

But we've got stacks of men … I'm blind with tears,

Staring into the dark. Cheero!

I wish they'd killed you in a decent show.

S
IEGFRIED
S
ASSOON

 

 

Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau

(July 1917)

‘And all her silken flanks with garlands drest' –

But we are coming to the sacrifice.

Must those have flowers who are not yet gone West?

May those have flowers who live with death and lice?

This must be the floweriest place

That earth allows; the queenly face

Of the proud mansion borrows grace for grace

Spite of those brute guns lowing at the skies.

 

Bold great daisies, golden lights,

Bubbling roses' pinks and whites –

Such a gay carpet! poppies by the million;

Such damask! such vermilion!

But if you ask me, mate, the choice of colour

Is scarcely right; this red should have been much duller.

E
DMUND
B
LUNDEN

 

 

Counter-Attack

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.

S
IEGFRIED
S
ASSOON

 

 

To the Prussians of England

When I remember plain heroic strength

And shining virtue shown by Ypres pools,

Then read the blither written by knaves for fools

In praise of English soldiers lying at length,

Who purely dream what England shall be made

Gloriously new, free of the old stains

By us, who pay the price that must be paid,

Will freeze all winter over Ypres plains.

Our silly dreams of peace you put aside

And Brotherhood of man, for you will see

An armed Mistress, braggart of the tide

Her children slaves, under your mastery …

We'll have a word there too, and forge a knife,

Will cut the cancer threatens England's life.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

Anthem for Doomed Youth

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 good-byes.

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.

W
ILFRED
O
WEN

 

 

To his Love

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.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

 

I Saw his Round Mouth's Crimson

I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,

           Like a sun, in his last deep hour;

Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,

           Clouding, half gleam, half glower,

And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.

           And in his eyes

The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,

           In different skies.

W
ILFRED
O
WEN

 

 

Photographs (To Two Scots Lads)

Lying in dug-outs, joking idly, wearily;

Watching the candle guttering in the draught;

Hearing the great shells go high over us, eerily

Singing; how often have I turned over, and laughed

 

With pity and pride, photographs of all colours,

All sizes, subjects: khaki brothers in France;

Or mothers' faces worn with countless dolours;

Or girls whose eyes were challenging and must dance,

 

Though in a picture only, a common cheap

Ill-taken card; and children – frozen, some

(Babies) waiting on Dicky-bird to peep

Out of the handkerchief that is his home

 

(But he's so shy!). And some with bright looks, calling

Delight across the miles of land and sea,

That not the dread of barrage suddenly falling

Could quite blot out – not mud nor lethargy.

 

Smiles and triumphant careless laughter. O

The pain of them, wide Earth's most sacred things!

Lying in dugouts, hearing the great shells slow

Sailing mile-high, the heart mounts higher and sings.

 

But once – O why did he keep that bitter token

Of a dead Love? – that boy, who, suddenly moved,

Showed me, his eyes wet, his low talk broken,

A girl who better had not been beloved.

I
VOR
G
URNEY

 

1918

 

 

 

I
N
J
ANUARY
1918, Robert Graves married Nancy Nicholson in London, and Wilfred Owen came down from Scarborough for the wedding. Here he met Eddie Marsh and Charles Scott Moncrieff who later put it about that he'd seduced this ‘quiet little person'. Scott Moncrieff tried to fix a home posting for his new friend but the trail to France opened up when a medical board upgraded Owen in early March. He moved to the northern command depot in Ripon, arriving there on 12 March and renting a room in the Yorkshire cathedral city.