Jeremy Hughes
Lieutenant Huw Llewellyn
1st July 1916
My men stood heavy under their packs.
Each occupied the ground beneath his skull.
In each face I saw the feet
I had inspected many times, their blisters and corns.
At zero I blew my whistle and we went over.
The tot of rum we'd had fired my voice
but it could not compete with the noise.
Men went down together in front of me as if they'd found something.
Three rose in the air as graceful as circus tumblers.
Another became a fountain of earth,
a few feathers afloat on the warm air the pigeon he carried.
I admonished a man skulking in a crater
before I realised he was dead, perfect in his singed uniform.
I was thankful to be hit, to stop,
dirt in my nose, mouth and eyes,
struck, at that instant,
by the memory of a girl in Wipers,
the vines of her arms.
A private I couldn't recognise, his face in shreds,
was mumbling next to me.
I wrapped his waterproof about him, put the Bible in his hands.
I hugged the ground like a hare.
That night I crawled and dragged us back to our line.
He was comforted until he died.
When a nurse pulled the blanket over his face
his feet were exposed. I knew him then.
Page(s) 36
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The