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 gray, |
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 our back to our dying.
|
Since we believe not otherwise can kind
fires burn; |
Nor 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.
|
To-night, His frost will fasten on this
mud and us, |
Shriveling many hands, puckering
foreheads crisp. |
The burying-party, picks and shovels in
their shaking grasp, |
Pause over half-known faces. All their
eyes are ice, |
But nothing happens.
|
Wilfred Owen
| Classic Poems |
|
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