AUGUST

Birth, the first attack, begins at dawn.

It’s also the last, whistle at sky-fall,

Illogical, unsynchronized, inept.

Children, pushed over the top

And kettledrummed across churned furrows

Kitted out with dreams and instinct,

Hope to learn before reaching the horizon.

Those in front call back advice:

‘Going to advance, send reinforcements.’

But who trust the old, when they as young

Spurned cautionary wisdom

That never harmonized with youth?

‘Going to a dance, send three-and-fourpence.’

Some fall quietly under each rabid burst of shell

Love of life unnoticed

In willingness to give it

Or the feckless letting-go.

Leaves drop in the zero-hour of spring

Young heat mangled by car or motorbike.

Broken sight looks in, no view beyond

Though terror rocks the heart to sleep

The signal-sky gives bad advice:

Get up, look outside, day again.

Insight warped by energy, blinded by ignorance.

The battlefield too wide,

Bullets rage at friends and parents

Strangers stunned in the lime-pits of oblivion.

Who blame for this sublime attack?

Did Brigadier-General God in his safe bunker plan?

He horsebacks by, devoted cheers.

Choleric face knows too much to tell –

It’s dangerous for any smile to show.

Whoever is cursed must be believed in

For Baal is dead. Get up. Push on.

Want to live forever?

Go through. No psychic wound can split

Or leg be lost at that onrushing slope.

Halfway, more craven, sometimes too clever,

Old campaigners want a hole to flatten in

Before rot of the brain encircles

Or Death’s concealed artillery

Plucks fingers from the final parapet.

Silence kills as quickly, you can bet.

Live on. Death pulls others in

Not you, or me, or us (not yet).

Earth underfoot is kind but waiting,

Green sea flows on the right flank,

Black rain foils the leftward sun,

Poppy clouds and mustard fields

Tricked out with dead ground, full woods,

Lateral valleys flecked with cornflowers.

Roses flake their fleshy petals down.

Time falls away. Battle deceptively recedes,

Peace lulls to the final killing ground,

Familiar voices coming up behind.