32
(The tavern outside the gate)
Now that the shock of so much emotion
has died away in the respite
of depths of night,
and the last patrol
has finished its last round;
and that, furtively and alone,
a smoky lamp-wick smoulders on,
in gentle rest I think,
think how the fervour of my dreams gave way
to this perplexity, inside an old
tavern outside the gate, today,
during the free-time hours.
There I was with my new comrades;
sitting there with them at a cluttered
table, when a shade
descended on me, and kept my life,
with its strength and pain,
distant from that evening’s racket.
I sipped in bewilderment
my two pennyworth of wine.
I was no poet, I was a lost soul,
playing the soldier,
staring around me at the crowded world,
stupid and mute;33
one like the others, who had traded
for red wine the few coppers
his mamma sent to him with kisses, neither
happy nor sad;
with only one idea inscribed
in his mind, induced
by a sound in the distance: the prescribed
hour of tattoo had passed.
Neither was that veil rent in twain,
nor from this life of mine did I
return to live, before the night had turned
chilly in the street and in the sky.