Isaac Rosenberg

From “Trench Poems”

THE DARKNESS crumbles away—

It is the same old Druid Time as ever.

Only a live thing leaps my hand—

A queer sardonic rat—

As I pull the parapet’s poppy

To stick behind my ear.

Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew

Your cosmopolitan sympathies

(And God knows what antipathies).

Now you have touched this English hand

You will do the same to a German—

Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure

To cross the sleeping green between.

It seems you inwardly grin as you pass:

Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,

Less chanced than you for life;

Bonds to the whims of murder,

Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,

The torn fields of France.

What do you see in our eyes

At the boom, the hiss, the swiftness,

The irrevocable earth buffet—

A shell’s haphazard fury.

What rootless poppies dropping?…..

But mine in my ear is safe,

Just a little white with the dust.