A poem for Remembrance Day
Returning
For now at last I know
That there is no escape
(Alun Lewis, ‘The Sentry’)
For how do you learn how to breathe again
after years of holding?
Your mind full of mud and shit
you stand by the cliff edge among an abundance of thrift,
the mass of pink splits your brain like a mortar shell,
lightning strikes your heart
so hard it burns ventricles.
For you have longed for this moment –
clear sky, fresh sea air.
Breathe in hold out pause repeat.
Your nose and ears still clogged with dirt and dust
but you hear the roar of waves below
over the bombardment that echoes in your head.
Salty brine of Irish Sea air penetrates
the fog of gas and stink of the rotten trench
as you wait to scramble over.
Smoke and barbed wire, the bullet hail attack,
bloody limbs flying, brains and guts scattered.
in hold out pause repeat.
Shouts and screams. Your mates’ eyes staring up
through drifting ochre smoke.
Nothing looks at nothing.
Life was finished, tears rain all down your face.
You peer over the edge
see red rocks pummelled by surf frothing far below,
blood bubbling from a blown-apart throat.
How do you come home?
Will this wide open space sometime bring peace?
Breathe in hold out pause repeat.
How do you learn to live again?
Remember to breathe freely?
If you want to keep breathing.
For the pinks are only grey, the sky steel,
the sea rutted iron, the path a trench
and death lives in you.
Breathe in hold out pause …
©JackieBiggs2020
