Traci Robison
dulce et decorum est
Response
November 4th
By Caroline Davies
Inspiration piece
There’s your friend
He said he’d stab you in the leg
to stop you going back to the front.
You made a joke of it saying you were afraid.
His book of poems The Counter-attack
frightened you more than the shot boy
under whose weight you lay,
his blood soaking into your uniform
like crimson-hot iron as it cools from the smelting.
Mad comet – now you are fixed in your orbit as a dark star.
There’s your mother hanging out washing to dry.
She’s hoping the war will soon be over.
That’s what the newspapers say
but she might finish knitting the pair of gloves.
In your last letter you thanked her
for the chocolate and the malted milk.
In seven days they will be ringing
………… the bells to announce the armistice
when the telegram boy will wheel his bicycle up the path
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