57530: Exposure

<p dir="ltr"> Our brains ache, in the merciless iced cast winds that knive us...<br> Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...<br> Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient...<br> Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,<br> But nothing happens.<br> Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,<br> Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.<br> Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,<br> Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.<br> What are we doing here?<br> The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...<br> We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.<br> Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army<br> Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,<br> But nothing happens.<br> Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.<br> Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow,<br> With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew;<br> We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,<br> But nothing happens.<br> Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces ---<br> We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,<br> Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,<br> Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses,<br> ---Is it that we are dying?<br> Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed<br> With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;<br> For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;<br> Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed,---<br> We turn back to our dying.<br> Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;<br> Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.<br> For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;<br> Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,<br> For love of God seems dying.<br> Tonight, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,<br> Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.<br> The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,<br> Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,<br> But nothing happens.</p>