Traci Robison and Caroline Davies

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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