WO
WO
GÉ
(from eye-witness accounts of the Creat War,
In Flanders Fields Museum, Cloth Hall, leper)
Stille Nacht: men's voices rise
from the trenches. In your sights
a man staggers with a fir tree
and you don't shoot -
you watch the small star travel
and come to rest - a stable,
a child bedded in straw
where the warm animals still are.
And men are leaving theirwatches
for a kick-out in No-man's-Land,
snipping through wet cotton
with wire-cutters, trading buttons.
Time stops. Time to repair
your cat's-cradle of barbed wire,
bring in your stiffened dead.
You've come so far
with beer, tobacco, oranges:
no wonder you hardly draw breath
O there, on the bank at Diksmuide,
Sfeeling the rope vibrate
as the host glides towards you
over the frozen river,
in its rime-bag of cloth.
w»
