At Carnoy (by Siegfried Sassoon)

At Carnoy
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

Down in the hollow there’s the whole Brigade
Camped in four groups: through twilight falling slow
I hear a sound of mouth-organs, ill-played,
And murmur of voices, gruff, confused, and low.
Crouched among thistle-tufts I’ve watched the glow
Of a blurred orange sunset flare and fade;
And I’m content. To-morrow we must go
To take some cursèd Wood … O world God made!

   July 3rd, 1916

*

‘Blighters’ (by Siegfried Sassoon)

‘Blighters’
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

The House is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin    
And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks    
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;    
‘We’re sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!’    
 
I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home, sweet Home,’    
And there’d be no more jokes in Music-halls    
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

*

She Was Lactating And Crying To Big Band Jazz The Last Time I Saw Her Sweet Face (by Paul Tristram)

She Was Lactating And Crying To Big Band Jazz
The Last Time I Saw Her Sweet Face

She would be sat just there
by the early evening window
of the downstairs front room
each day as I returned
to my lodging house
deep in the French Quarter.
I had never actually spoken to her
but I had heard the Landlady
call her ‘Mary’ as she gossiped
with visiting strangers
about her bad luck and problems.
That was 14 years ago this Fall
and she haunts my evenings still.
I remember the rhythm
of her melancholy
climb up the stairs
and slide under the door of my room
just like late night swamp mist.
I wondered long about her then
and I wonder long about her now
as she watched that dirty street
holding her fatherless child
close to her young tear-wet breasts.

© 2014 by Paul Tristram, used with permission

Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world.  He yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight.  This too may pass, yet.

A Whispered Tale (by Siegfried Sassoon)

A Whispered Tale
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

 I’d heard fool-heroes brag of where they’d been,
With stories of the glories that they’d seen.
But you, good simple soldier, seasoned well
In woods and posts and crater-lines of hell,
Who dodge remembered ‘crumps’ with wry grimace,
Endured experience in your queer, kind face,
Fatigues and vigils haunting nerve-strained eyes,
And both your brothers killed to make you wise;
You had no babbling phrases; what you said
Was like a message from the maimed and dead.
But memory brought the voice I knew, whose note
Was muted when they shot you in the throat;
And still you whisper of the war, and find
Sour jokes for all those horrors left behind.

*

A Working Party (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

A Working Party
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

Three hours ago he blundered up the trench,
Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;
Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls
With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.
He couldn’t see the man who walked in front;
Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet
Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing
Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.

Voices would grunt ‘Keep to your right — make way!’
When squeezing past some men from the front-line:
White faces peered, puffing a point of red;
Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks
And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom
Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore
Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.

A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread
And flickered upward, showing nimble rats
And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain;
Then the slow silver moment died in dark.

The wind came posting by with chilly gusts
And buffeting at the corners, piping thin.
And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots
Would split and crack and sing along the night,
And shells came calmly through the drizzling air
To burst with hollow bang below the hill.



Three hours ago, he stumbled up the trench;
Now he will never walk that road again:
He must be carried back, a jolting lump
Beyond all needs of tenderness and care.



He was a young man with a meagre wife
And two small children in a Midland town,
He showed their photographs to all his mates,
And they considered him a decent chap
Who did his work and hadn’t much to say,
And always laughed at other people’s jokes
Because he hadn’t any of his own.



That night when he was busy at his job
Of piling bags along the parapet,
He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet
And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold.
He thought of getting back by half-past twelve,
And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep
In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes
Of coke, and full of snoring weary men.



He pushed another bag along the top,
Craning his body outward; then a flare
Gave one white glimpse of
No Man’s Land and wire;
And as he dropped his head the instant split
His startled life with lead, and all went out.

*

They Would Have Come through Petra (by Rose Mary Boehm)

 

They would Have Come through Petra

Haroun, Haroun. My lover
was buried in Mont Seir,
in Rekem, in the sanctuary,
by those who made water
spring from rocks
in the desert city.

Entombed in solid rock he lies
until the earth once more
splits the stone, lets water
run again into the Wadi.

Since the eighteenth dynasty
I have been waiting
where the valley opens
onto the plains, where I shall
hold the desert winds
with my breath,
waiting for the rain.

* * * * *

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (Tangents), her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in US poetry reviews. Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Avatar, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Boston Literary, Red River Review, Ann Arbor, Main Street Rag, Misfit Magazine and others.

Reasonable Request (by Rose Mary Boehm)

 

Reasonable Request 

Saying ‘she slept and never woke’

sounds like running water

under the stone bridge

somewhere over the Carwinley Burn.


I want my death to approach me softly,

like a child sliding in socks

along a marble floor.

* * * * *

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (Tangents), her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in US poetry reviews. Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Avatar, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Boston Literary, Red River Review, Ann Arbor, Main Street Rag, Misfit Magazine and others.

In the Pink (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

In the Pink
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

So Davies wrote: ‘This leaves me in the pink’.
Then scrawled his name: ‘Your loving sweetheart, Willie’.
With crosses for a hug. He’d had a drink
Of rum and tea; and, though the barn was chilly,
For once his blood ran warm; he had pay to spend.
Winter was passing; soon the year would mend.

But he couldn’t sleep that night; stiff in the dark
He groaned and thought of Sundays at the farm,
And how he’d go as cheerful as a lark
In his best suit, to wander arm in arm
With brown-eyed Gwen, and whisper in her ear
The simple, silly things she liked to hear.

And then he thought: to-morrow night we trudge
Up to the trenches, and my boots are rotten.
Five miles of stodgy clay and freezing sludge,
And everything but wretchedness forgotten.
To-night he’s in the pink; but soon he’ll die.
And still the war goes on — he don’t know why. 
  

*

Travelling Alone (by Rose Mary Boehm)

 

Travelling Alone 

Late evening in the Barbados Hotel.

I have a daring whisky

on the rocks instead of my usual

ice-cold plebeian beer.

I want to become invisible,

part of the decoration.



I wander between groups—

the name droppers, the old

acquaintances who meet once a year

in this place known to out-price

the riff-raff. A special offer

tonight from the old oil baron

who hopped over on his private jet

from Venezuela.

Need to get out.



The night is warm and fragrant,

the place almost has a roof,

there’s Rasta hair and pungent

clouds of ganja.

I move to the irresistible beat.

No woman, no cry.

* * * * *

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (Tangents), her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in US poetry reviews. Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Avatar, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Boston Literary, Red River Review, Ann Arbor, Main Street Rag, Misfit Magazine and others.

Management needs – none reported (by Rose Mary Boehm)

 

Management needs–none reported

Fish swim upside down,
sea anemones burrow
into the underside of the ice shelf,
tentacles protruding into frigid water
like flowers on a ceiling.

Living on the other side of you
I push into your glacial
embrace. On cold nights
I can hear the water drip,
drip from stalactites.

* * * * *

A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection (Tangents), her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in US poetry reviews. Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Avatar, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Boston Literary, Red River Review, Ann Arbor, Main Street Rag, Misfit Magazine and others.