56073: Break of Day in the Trenches

<p dir="ltr"> The darkness crumbles away---<br> It is the same old druid Time as ever.<br> Only a live thing leaps my hand---<br> A queer sardonic rat---<br> As I pull the parapet's poppy<br> To stick behind my ear.<br> Droll rat, they would shoot you if they<br> knew<br> Your cosmopolitan sympathies.<br> Now you have touched this English hand<br> You will do the same to a German---<br> Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure<br> To cross the sleeping green between.<br> It seems you inwardly grin as you pass<br> Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes<br> Less chanced than you for life,<br> Bonds to the whims of murder,<br> Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,<br> The torn fields of France.<br> What do you see in our eyes<br> At the shrieking iron and flame<br> Hurled through still heavens?<br> What quaver---what heart aghast?<br> Poppies whose roots are in man's veins<br> Drop, and are ever dropping;<br> But mine in my ear is safe,<br> Just a little white with the dust.</p>