Classic Poem

He told me, one night, when we were off duty,
And with a pride which might have been Lord Nelson's
Detailing Emma to a fellow Admiral—
Only that's one thing Nelson never did—
And Lady Hamilton was gold and rubies
While this girl was a circus-rider's spangles,
As real as they, at least not one whit more so,
And he, poor boy, as far from Nelson's honour.
Well, there you have it, tucked up in our tent,
Propping our spurs against an iron stove-pipe
And talking as I'm wishing now we hadn't.
But he was at it, and I couldn't stop him.
I swear the fellow's talk became quite lyric,
A sort of chucking stars, and into sawdust—
It seemed to me the lady was no better;
She scuffled underneath a press of footsteps,
His among others. I had liked him hugely.
A great, big, honest, rather clumsy chap,
Just off of middle-age, and such a baby,
Playing the soldier in a uniform,
And playing it damned well, you understand;
We had no better in the regiment.
I used to chuckle just to see him acting
His own ideal. But somehow as I listened
The folly in him rasped upon my nerves.
What right had he to be so innocent
To whip a tawdry intrigue up to poetry
And set me shivering who had not got it.
He painted her exactly. I could see
Not only what he said, but what he didn't.
I guessed the sort of talcum-powder
Kind of woman who had picked him up.
Cheap smartness, one who pats her hair in order
Before shop-windows, and pays for what she buys
With crumpled bills fished from a small mesh purse
Whose gold is gilding and wearing off at that;
Add, too, a passion for gold-tipped cigarettes
And blue-sashed bon-bon boxes. But she was shrewd,
I knew as much because he was so pleased—
With her, of course, and also with himself.
He saw her Cleopatra on high Nile
Floating between blue lupins, graciously
According to him, Anthony, her heart.
And that was just the way he wasn't Nelson,
Who saw her Emma—and nothing else at all.
The thing stopped there, it seemed, for he was married
And decent enough before she came, I know.
He filled the ache in him with high-falutin,
I wondered how long that would satisfy
And felt his charmer would draw him farther in
To cheques of somewhat high denomination
Paid, naturally, upon receipt of value.
Well, when he took to glowing like the sun
Upon a hayrick on a Summer morning
I thought the lady had achieved her figure.
But what I didn't reckon was just the man.
The thing was epic to him now, I saw.
War and his love—a fearful combination
To snarl the simple structure of his life.
He twisted to it and turned upon himself
With such a marvellous gyration, that in some way
He pulled it up to grandeur, and he a-top
Mystically bright and crowned with bitter laurel.
And all the time, behind, there was his wife.
He got her so at last, fuddled his wits
To it, that she became the smirch upon
His unique glory. I used to marvel at the paradox
He'd hung cocooning round him, but so it was.
The fellow grew to something greatly larger
Than I could have believed. I never said
This was a moral tale, you understand,
It's simply true.
Well, we went over, both
In the same company, I Captain to his Lieutenant,
And, in due course, were sent on to the front.
A month went by, and then a bit of shell
Took him between the shoulder-blades and gouged
Into a lung and stayed there. We were caught,
A handful of us, right between barrages.
I'd got a leg, or rather hadn't one,
So there we sat, and cursed, and bled, and died.
I didn't, you observe. Worse luck, perhaps.
I'll never get the joy that fellow had
Coughing, and spitting, and whimpering her name.
He met that shell toting a wounded sergeant
Through our barrage, and, coming back, it hit.
Tough luck? Oh, I don't know. He had his time.
When the delirium struck him, I covered my ears,
Hearing a man like that is too close cornered,
Like something naked hurting you with beauty.
It ended then for him, but I came home.
His wife was cool and stately as a widow.
The talcum-powder lady changed her man.
And yet I think the person was an artist
To carve a hero out of what he was
When she first ran across him. I wonder sometimes
What she can think about it. As for me,
I always give it up at just this point.
Poor dear old chap, God bless his silly soul.