I. Seeking
I see his face sometimes.
Cold and senseless and still
As it was when in the silence of a truce
We salvaged what we could from the wreck
Of shattered limbs and blood.
I am glad I did it.
Inched into No Man's Land
Crawling because there is a scorched circle
In my leg where flesh had been
In the settling of blood, over
Dark faces and white, now grey in the pallor of death,
Trod upon, in the great red wallowing
Mist of nowhere. I can't find him at first.
It is a gruesome task now that I think of it
A hideous duty which wears upon one, wears
Like the fiery rain upon our ears until we
Give out and give in; and winded wretches,
Eyeless, limbless, soulless
Wrecks of ourselves, we go home
To die, I suppose. Chance, or Providence
Has granted him a different fate.
Better or worse I can't tell.
Moving between bodies limp and bloodied, sheathed
In a shroud of mud, which served, at least, in death
A purpose other than to impede and pollute;
Peering into faces, soulless things, unseeing eyes
Uniform colours, grey and red - life and death
For once in union.
I see all these things and neither cringe nor weep for what is
But, stupid and dogged with the daze of death,
I look for him.
II. Him
Him.
The boy like me on our first day under
A Turkish sun.
Peering across No Man's Land from behind the parapet
Each with a fistful of gun, him with red ribbon fastened
Around his wrist. A patriot, I think, and raise my gun,
Smirking a little. A sniper rifle can bridge miles.
I am fearless, I say, and yet the blood rushes from my face
And sweat replaces it, and my hands are suddenly
Slick and shaking.
He lifts his gun too, points it, finger on the trigger.
And then something happens. I'm not sure what.
Maybe we look at each other too long.
White and wide-eyed, in a long terrible moment
When the rush and roar about us dies to nothing -
The difference of nation and blood and allies
In those few metres between us, those metres
Of No Man's Land.
