[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.