Exposure - Wilfred Owen

• Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us .
• Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
• Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
• Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
• But nothing happens.
• Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,
• Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
• Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
• Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
• What are we doing here?
• The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . .
• We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
• Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
• Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,
• But nothing happens.
• Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
• Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
• With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew,
• We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,
• But nothing happens.
• Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces—
• We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
• Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
• Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
• —Is it that we are dying?
• Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed
• With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
• For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
• Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,—
• We turn back to our dying.
• Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
• Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
• For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
• Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
• For love of God seems dying.
• Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,
• Shrivelling many hands, and puckering foreheads crisp.
• The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,
• Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
• But nothing happens.