| [00:14.000] |
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, |
| [00:18.000] |
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. |
| [00:23.000] |
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin |
| [00:28.000] |
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud ... |
| [00:31.000] |
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood |
| [00:36.000] |
run upwards from the slime into its wounds; |
| [00:40.000] |
see lines and lines of British boys rewind |
| [00:43.000] |
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home - |
| [00:48.000] |
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers |
| [00:55.000] |
not entering the story now |
| [00:57.000] |
to die and die and die. |
| [01:00.000] |
Dulce - No - Decorum - No - Pro patria mori. |
| [01:08.000] |
You walk away. |
| [01:11.000] |
You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet) |
| [01:15.000] |
like all your mates do too - |
| [01:19.000] |
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert - |
| [01:26.000] |
and light a cigarette. |
| [01:28.000] |
There's coffee in the square, |
| [01:30.000] |
warm French bread |
| [01:32.000] |
and all those thousands dead |
| [01:34.000] |
are shaking dried mud from their hair |
| [01:35.000] |
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive, |
| [01:40.000] |
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released |
| [01:43.000] |
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings. |
| [01:49.000] |
You lean against a wall, |
| [01:50.000] |
your several million lives still possible |
| [01:53.000] |
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food. |
| [02:00.000] |
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile. |
| [02:05.000] |
If poetry could truly tell it backwards, |
| [02:09.000] |
then it would. |