Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Voice-over was gentle, though the picture hurt:
thousands of chalk-white gravestones through the trees.
The soldiers all were young men when they died.

Freckles mottle the crown of the skull;
voice of an army corporal, one of three.
At ninety-four he dreams about it still.

‘That night, the engineers laid down a tape
below the parapet, for troops to line up by.
How young we were, but strong of heart’, he cried.

‘Nothing, they thought, could live through that bombardment.
I was one of the lucky ones;  the rest -
thousands of chalk-white faces on the ground.

None of them much more than twenty when they fell;
and with the mist, their bodies looked like sheep,
a flock of sheep all round you, lying down.

One of the lucky ones, they said. And so,
they sent me with a sandbag, to collect
the pay-books from the pockets of our dead.

I stepped among half-faces, empty brain-
cavities - and some of them I knew -
walked in intestines of the disembowelled.

Three of us there were:  all friends.  Two of them here,
buried in different places.  Where’s the third?
He was the lucky one;  he’s talking to you now,

and he feels a bit of a fraud, for having
left them there.  But that’s the way it is.
Five thousand chalk-white faces - which are theirs?

I’ve always wondered was there something more
I might have done for them? I can’t forget
their dying faces; dream about them still.

We’re all in the same boat - that’s what we said.
Who built the boat?  Who launched us on this sea?
How many widows did I make that day,

how many German mothers lost their sons?’
Freckles mottle the crown of the skull.  ‘There may
be a god, of sorts.  It’s not for me to say.

But I don’t think there can be a god
who could have any real control.  As regards
if you like, the feelings of man, to man’.

Memories of the Somme.  A bit of a fraud.
They’d sent him with a sandbag, to collect
the pay-books from the pockets of their dead.

‘How young we were, but strong of heart’, he sang.
The voice was gentle, though the pictures hurt,
from feelings if you like, of man for man.

O lay me down at last and walk away.
At ninety-four, there might be a god of sorts.
Wait till the sun shines Nellie, by and by.