Poem


(Abbreviated from the conversation with Mr. T E H.


Over the flat slope of St Eloi
A wide wall of sandbags.
Night,
In the silence desultory men
Pottering over small fires, cleaning their mess-tins:
To and fro, from the lines,
Men walk as on Piccadilly,
Making paths in the dark,
Through scattered dead horses,
Over a dead Belgian’s body.


The Germans have rockets. The English have no rockets,
Behind the lines, cannon, hidden, lying back miles.
Before the line, chaos.


My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are
corridors.
Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on.