Returning

 

 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