war poems

• only then would he let me trace the frozen river which ran through his face
• sweating , unexploded mine which buried deep in his mind
• then and only then did i come close
• marks of weakness, marks of woe
• mind-forged manacles
• in every… in every… in every
• blackening church appals
• some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England
• a dust whom england bore, shaped, made aware
• a pulse in the eternal mind
• she sits in the tawny vapour
• he-has-fallen- in the far south land
• his hand whom the worm now knows
• in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat

  Hawk Roosting Ted Hughes
• now i hold creation in my foot
• i kill where i please

  because it was all mine
• i am going to keep things like this
• bent double like old beggars under sacks

  dulce
• he plunges at me, guttering, chocking drowning

  dulce
• the oldie lie: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori


  dulce
• the wasted young


  mametz wood
• like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin

  mametz wood
• a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm

  mametz wood