A week before the Armistice, you died.
They did not keep your heart like Livingstones,
then plant your bones near Shakespeares. So you lie
between two privates, sacrificed like Christ
to politics, your poetry unknown
except for that brief flurrys: thirteen months
with Gaukroger beside you in the trench,
dismembered, as you babbled, as the stench
of gangrene filled your nostrils, till you clenched
your broken heart together and the fist
began to pulse with life, so close to death.
Or was it at Craiglockhart, in the care
of "ergotherapists" that you sensed life
is only in the work, and made despair
a thing that Yeats despised, but also breath,
a mouthfuls merest air, inspired less
than wrested from you, and which we confess
we only vaguely breathe: the troubled air
that even Sassoon failed to share, because
a man in pieces is not healed by gauze,
and breaths transparent, unless we believe
the words are true despite their lack of weight
and float to us like chlorine--scalding eyes,
and lungs, and hearts. Your words revealed the fate
of boys who died in trenches, gagged on lies.
Originally published by The Chariton Review
What the Poet Sees
What the poet sees,
he sees as a swimmer underwater,
watching the shoreline blur,
sees through his breaths weightless bubbles ...
Both worlds grow obscure.
Originally published by Mandrake Poetry Review
