Stuart Henson
Lead Soldier
Weeding a corner of the gravel path
I dig him up, among the bony roots
of couch-grass and the sun-dried stones.
Headless; footless: a victim of time’s
atrocity. Somehow he is not quite
three-dimensional, but elongated,
skinny in the tatters of his uniform.
His bugler’s arms are tucked, foetal,
as if he lay forever recovering.
The earth has begun to soften him
into a thin vein of mineral.
And this is the fate of soldiers
when the hand that has moved them
tires and seeks another kind of play.
[Editor’s Note: This is reprinted without the typos which graced it in issue 15.]
Page(s) 83
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