Classic Poem

I. THE FLUKE

For two years you went
Through all the worst of it,
Men fell around you, but you did not fall.
On the Somme when the air was a sea
Of contesting flashes and clouds of smoke,
Your gunners fell fast but you got never a scratch.
And once when you watched from a village tower
(At Longueval, was it?) between our guns and theirs
As men fought in the houses below,
A shell from an English battery came
And tore a hole in the tower below you,
But you were not hurt and remained observing.

And now,
A casual shell has come
And pierced your head,
And the men who were with you, uninjured,
Carried you back,
And you died on the way.

II. THE CONVERSATION

When we've greeted each other again,
And you've filled your pipe and sat down and stretched your legs,
You will look in the fire for a minute
And then you will say, with a yawn,
" Well, when do you think this damned war will be over? "
And I shall say nothing, or something as empty as nothing.
But I am forgetting.
We shall not greet each other again;
You will not ask that question again.

III. THE DEAF ADDER

Well, it's no good brooding.
The past cannot return.
They have killed him and buried him.
Many men as good as he have gone:
They were good men even if one never knew them.
It is a just and honourable war.
He went in readily at the start, though he hated it,
And one would not have had him do otherwise.
And, thank God, he did the job well
That had to be done.
He has suffered with millions of others
For the sake of the future's peace,
And ungrudgingly laid down his life
In the cleanest of England's wars.
There is no room for regret here, only for pride.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Heart, you fool, lie down.
Cannot you hear
My excellent reasoning?

IV. THE LANDSCAPE

You said, that first winter,
That the landscape around Ypres
Reminded you of Chinese paintings:
The green plain, striped with trenches,
The few trees on the plain,
And the puffs of smoke sprinkled over the plain.
You said, when the war was over,
That you would record that green desolation
In flat colours and lines
As a Chinese artist would.
That is what you were going to do.
The plain is still there.

V. ANOTHER HOUR

How many days we spent together!
Thousands.
And now I would give anything,
Anything,
For another, or even for one hour:
An hour, were it only of aimless lounging,
Or a game of billiards in a pub.