Christopher James
Carthorses
All the dead from the Great War
arrived at the clifftop over-reaching
the massive Atlantic.
They came in wagons like gypsy caravans,
but dull and stripped of colour,
their struts resting on the ground.
The soldiers sat facing each other
in two rows, not speaking
but not weeping either,
their hands flat on their knees
as if returning from a football match,
narrowly defeated.
The carthorses had already formed
a steady, lolloping procession
back to the battlefields.
The wagons, in their thousands,
were drawn now by ropes,
into a wooden building on the cliff’s edge
as large and as bleak as a power station.
On the other side, traps opened
and one by one,
the carts were jettisoned into the ocean,
propelled in high, loping arcs; stragglers
leapt from the wooden ramparts
swam deep underwater
pulled open the doors and took
their places next to their comrades.
Page(s) 28
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