Burial Party

THIS is the wilderness: the rain teems down.
Over the ridge the ghastly pistol-light
Hangs like a bubble on the darkness blown.
The death-machines begin. Flight upon flight
Of hurrying bullets scythes the lower air,
And the rain steadily falls. A sheeted flicker
In the dense pour proclaims the crashing flare
Of a shell landed.

‘Sergeant, cannot the men be quicker?’
‘It’s heavy work, sir!’
‘Weno time to spare.’
‘The padre’s coming.’
‘The rain makes ’em numb.’
‘Get on with it.’
Shades splash amid the mess.
The rain teems down. The writhen waste is dumb,
Defiled, defaced, shamed in its hopelessness.
This is the Ultimate Hell, the Wilderness,
To which all Youth, Laughter, and Love must come:
Twelve graves brutishly scraped among the slime.
If Christ were here! If Christ could seem to have been!

Let not their mothers till after a due time
Come to this Hell, when may be ’t will be green;
When harebells shake, or when the tranquil rime
Hides the gorged craters that they be not seen.
For came they sooner, looking on the skies,
The withered skies, the obscene waste below,
What power had then their wrinkled memories
To summon up that little time ago

When small hands stretched, when stared the round bright eyes,
When rosy, bubbled mouths opened to crow
Their world-engendered mirth and baby joy
To those, whose children now lie here a-row?
Mothers! now made the saddest word in speech!
They would not gaze. Impotent would they fall.
Scared at the Nothing in the heart which each
Must find, fronting the solitude and all
The crosses dotted far as the eye can reach.
O Christ, Sweet Christ!

‘Now, sir, we’re almost done.'
‘I’m coming.’
‘They ’re a-laying of ’em in.’
The shadows stagger by.
‘An ’eavy one.’
‘’Tis the mud on ’em.’
‘Young ’e must a bin.’
‘I’ve got a stitch.’
‘O God, I felt ’is skin!’
‘Stop it!’
‘Be careful how ye take en, mun:
His legs be broken.’
‘Quit yer blatherin’.’
‘Get on with it: What’s done can’t be undone.’
‘What’s that man doing, sergeant? Is he sick?
Get on with it there, man!’
‘A bloody gal!’
‘Find out.’
‘Well, what’s the matter with yer, chick?
It can’t be ’elped— sorry, sir, spoke too quick:
’E’s but a youngster, sir. ’E’s found ’is pal.’
This is the Wilderness: the rain teems down.
‘Padre!’
‘I know, boy. Cuts one like a knife.
Poor boy. I know. Their pains were all His own.
Hush — Hush! “I am the Resurrection and the Life."'