Poetry

Apocalypse 16

Ch. 16

Over the trenches mist blows brown and yellow,

The criss-cross trenches that I found ahead

As at Somme and Verdun dug, fit for battle.

But was the misty smoke out- or in-side?

I asked my master this on that patrol,

And he: ‘Head down and move, look at your feet;

The distance runner watches his own breath,

And thinks: in through the nose, out through the mouth.

‘Pay no attention to the yellow smoke.’

And yet, those dug outs hampered our advance,

And the fog grew darker, so I made to speak:

‘Sir, what with all the physical remains,

The dead men lying after some attack

(For there were bodies, picked at by demons)

I can’t keep silent. Who were these dead men

Are they victims of God or of Satan?’

And he: ‘Earthworks dug by the passionate

Who were a happy and a sensual bunch

But just as often sad and desperate.

Like failed space rockets, hard and fierce at launch

And hard when falling back in their retreat.

But here, where no world is, they dug this trench

To stand still for a while, while the earth dies

But they are now the food of rats and flies.’

Still, some men climbed out of these cold dugs outs,

And made some progress over no man’s land.

Those that remained showed me their broken hearts,

I saw the heart, blood pumping, push around

The blood to all the other body parts,

A mystery the fathers understand

When they say that the whole life of the soul

Is gathered here, the life root and the soil.

I saw lungs which take in the gas from air,

And add it to the blood, two empty bags.

I saw the kidneys and the dark bladder

Which lie beneath the gut above the legs.

They make use of the sweet things, that first pair;

The other filters out poisonous dregs.

The stomach and its pipes containing food;

I saw the nerves and brain inside the head.

When seeing these, usually confined in skin,

I asked myself again, and said out loud:

‘Who killed these people?’ ‘You ask me again,

Let him explain,’ said my beloved guide.

He pointed down the trench that we were in;

There was a camp fire and tea being brewed.

We walked toward the light and found a space

‘Achilles, the swift footed son of Peleus.’

My master said that. I said: ‘Still a ghost?

They said, or Homer said, you were in hell,

And would go back to live the life you lost

And do a poor man’s labour without skill

Rather than be a king there.’ Unimpressed

He poked the fire and drank his tea as well.

Then stood and passed to me the empty cup

‘I have another chance. Over the top!

‘I’ll cross through no man’s land, a man like me

Who sinned so much, but also had virtues

And glimpsed the light like this fire that you see.

The intellect’s light rendered me to choose

To show or to deny Priam mercy.’

He walked into the darkness and the noise

The sound of the collapse of all the world

Which came behind us like a scroll is curled.

My master took my arm and made me stand

And we too climbed out of that wet corpse hole

Facing toward the dark of no man’s land.

‘Did he say, that the light of the ideal

Is what had made it easy to contend,

And fight on forward from unreal to real?’

My master put his hands cupped on his knee,

I put my foot in there, he lifted me.

And when I’d reached the ground and parapet

I put my hand out, helping him in turn.

When men in modern wars fight in the street

Then street lights are not usually on,

So small explosives shot up in the night,

And flashes from the muzzle of a gun,

Are all there is to illuminate the scene

Or else the moon and stars shine on the town.

Just so, few people and few lights were there.

And yet, ahead I saw a figure walk.

I hailed him: ‘Wait a minute, you, stranger.’

Sometimes an inspiration makes you talk

Or make a gamble. He said: ‘This despair,

Is all about the lack and complete dark

Which is lived widely by those without hope.

I know you,’ he said, when I caught him up.

‘You’ve asked our Lord why men died and now die,

And seem to mutilate their flesh and bone?

I’ll answer that for Him. There are these three:

Faith, hope, and love, and they are simply one

By pushing us to real reality.

Men without hope die. My name is John Donne.’

And it was him, the father of the Church

The Church whose line has burnt out like a match.

‘When Englishmen were in the world above

Or in the past world, they were distracted;

Distraction made them indifferent to love

And hope in the eternal was not bred.

They did not breed it, for, they were full of

The triumph of a life without our God.

The only warmth and the only light you’ll find

Here, is in hope bred in a subtle mind.

‘All else is darkness. This pitiless night.

They run the other way, this generation,

Only despair and futureless retreat.

O fatherless and ruined faithless nation;

How intense is the longing for the light?

The light rising above the dark of passion?

And not the warmth of my beloved’s thigh;

It is not sin to love kindness and beauty.

‘No, I mean that near drugged-up emptiness

Of minds that have no centre; in their graves

They flee the dark non-principle of madness.

Watch them run from the hope of God which saves.’

The preacher of St Paul’s said that, said this,

Just as I’ve written it. And I saw waves

Like human wave attacks, go backwards then,

A line of sinners went back. We went on.

The three of us walked for a little while.

‘Above all, it’s an intellect they lack.’

But I was tired, and could not listen well.

Sometimes a shot or blast behind our back

Reported and resounded. Later still

A distant noise ahead on the track we took,

Like shouts that celebrate a victory.

I asked: ‘What is that sound that reaches me?’