my feet
are numb in my boots,
I have holes in my soles, the
brown water to my ankles
but it will not freeze
filled with gun oil,
blood and drek
I am
not sure
when I slept last,
if I ever did
the others are there,
their eyes closed
some sleeping
some trying to sleep
some trying to awake,
though they will not
we
have yet
to throw their bodies
on the heap
all eyes
are closed in the trench
save mine, and the sergeant
who stands like a statue
more still than the dead
only his eyes move
back and forth
when
I am not looking at the wire,
the rutted field, and the ridge
where the Germans also sleep,
breathing the same foul stench,
I close my eyes, though I do not sleep,
but think of home, of Irina
I see her eyes, not the sergeant’s
and wonder if they have been closed
like mama’s and papa’s
and those beside me
I ask
the sergeant if tomorrow will be
the white flag, when we and the Germans
can retrieve the dead, from the wires,
where they hang, starved naked apes…
and when the flares fire the night sky
I see the reflection in their wide open eyes
like the glint of light on broken glass
I cannot
close their eyes
all is still
except for the swimming rats
and the pyres that send curling smoke
into the gray sky--neither the rodents
nor the fires utter a sound
the sun
is surely there, somewhere silently
making its arc in our pallid sky
but the last time I saw it
was two mornings ago,
or three, or two
when it rose,
I felt it on my face
through the caked mud,
and blood from Ivan,
who was shot through the neck
and fell on me, and I lay still
with him on top of me,
like a thick blanket
his warm life elixir
painting my helmet
and face red, him gasping softly,
though only a few seconds
until more rounds pocked his body,
a carcass by then,
but my salvation
would I be
the sodden sack of flesh
that covers another?
would the one who hides
under me remember my name?
and recall that I was
his salvation,
though I only a breathless
monkey, with holes in my boots
and a **** soiled uniform
would he
walk bent over
with the blessed cane of age
and remember, all I had done
for him, by simply dying?
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 4:17 PM UTC
my feet
are numb in my boots,
I have holes in my soles, the
brown water to my ankles
but it will not freeze
filled with gun oil,
blood and drek
I am
not sure
when I slept last,
if I ever did
the others are there,
their eyes closed
some sleeping
some trying to sleep
some trying to awake,
though they will not
we
have yet
to throw their bodies
on the heap
all eyes
are closed in the trench
save mine, and the sergeant
who stands like a statue
more still than the dead
only his eyes move
back and forth
when
I am not looking at the wire,
the rutted field, and the ridge
where the Germans also sleep,
breathing the same foul stench,
I close my eyes, though I do not sleep,
but think of home, of Irina
I see her eyes, not the sergeant’s
and wonder if they have been closed
like mama’s and papa’s
and those beside me
I ask
the sergeant if tomorrow will be
the white flag, when we and the Germans
can retrieve the dead, from the wires,
where they hang, starved naked apes…
and when the flares fire the night sky
I see the reflection in their wide open eyes
like the glint of light on broken glass
I cannot
close their eyes
all is still
except for the swimming rats
and the pyres that send curling smoke
into the gray sky--neither the rodents
nor the fires utter a sound
the sun
is surely there, somewhere silently
making its arc in our pallid sky
but the last time I saw it
was two mornings ago,
or three, or two
when it rose,
I felt it on my face
through the caked mud,
and blood from Ivan,
who was shot through the neck
and fell on me, and I lay still
with him on top of me,
like a thick blanket
his warm life elixir
painting my helmet
and face red, him gasping softly,
though only a few seconds
until more rounds pocked his body,
a carcass by then,
but my salvation
would I be
the sodden sack of flesh
that covers another?
would the one who hides
under me remember my name?
and recall that I was
his salvation,
though I only a breathless
monkey, with holes in my boots
and a **** soiled uniform
would he
walk bent over
with the blessed cane of age
and remember, all I had done
for him, by simply dying?
**the phrase "the glint of light on broken glass" is part of a quote from Anton Chekov--it has nothing to do with war
for those unaware of the significance of 11/11/11, from the US VA:
World War I – known at the time as “The Great War” - officially ended when the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919... However, fighting ceased seven months earlier when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. For that reason, November 11, 1918, is generally regarded as the end of “the war to end all wars.”
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