The Map and the Clock

by Carol Ann Duffy

  Like a thin tune on a reed.

  Blue tobacco-smoke drifted and curled about us;

  Its eddying wove for us a mystic screen.

  The field and its littered trenches dropped, and shimmered

  In the clear gulf between

  Real and dream; the gulf where shadowless silence

  Dwells and beauty is strange, and thin, and far,

  And the world is quiet and flat, as pictures woven

  On old tapestries are.

  So we lay and laughed in the breathless noon-tide.

  Your laughter, and your faces, burnt with the sun,

  Were as far and as near as heaven, and as mystic….

  And the lunch hour was done.

  Stiffly we stooped again in the sun-baked trenches,

  And flung the lifted potatoes into pails.

  And the earth stood out once more in relief and shadow,

  Wholesome, like fairy-tales.

  ROSE MACAULAY

  The Silent One

  Who died on the wires, and hung there, one of two –

  Who for his hours of life had chattered through

  Infinite lovely chatter of Bucks accent:

  Yet faced unbroken wires; stepped over, and went

  A noble fool, faithful to his stripes – and ended.

  But I weak, hungry, and willing only for the chance

  Of line – to fight in the line, lay down under unbroken

  Wires, and saw the flashes and kept unshaken,

  Till the politest voice – a finicking accent, said:

  ‘Do you think you might crawl through there: there’s a hole.’

  Darkness, shot at: I smiled, as politely replied –

  ‘I’m afraid not. Sir.’ There was no hole no way to be seen

  Nothing but chance of death, after tearing of clothes.

  Kept flat, and watched the darkness, hearing bullets whizzing –

  And thought of music – and swore deep heart’s deep oaths

  (Polite to God) and retreated and came on again,

  Again retreated – and a second time faced the screen.

  IVOR GURNEY

  First Time In

  After the dread tales and red yarns of the Line

  Anything might have come to us; but the divine

  Afterglow brought us up to a Welsh colony

  Hiding in sandbag ditches, whispering consolatory

  Soft foreign things. Then we were taken in

  To low huts candle-lit, shaded close by slitten

  Oilsheets, and there but boys gave us kind welcome,

  So that we looked out as from the edge of home,

  Sang us Welsh things, and changed all former notions

  To human hopeful things. And the next day’s guns

  Nor any Line-pangs ever quite could blot out

  That strangely beautiful entry to war’s rout;

  Candles they gave us, precious and shared over-rations –

  Ulysses found little more in his wanderings without doubt.

  ‘David of the White Rock’, the ‘Slumber Song’ so soft, and that

  Beautiful tune to which roguish words by Welsh pit boys

  Are sung – but never more beautiful than here under the guns’ noise.

  IVOR GURNEY

  The Soaking

  The rain has come, and the earth must be very glad

  Of its moisture, and the made roads, all dust clad;

  It lets a veil down on the lucent dark,

  And not of any bright ground thing shows its spark.

  Tomorrow’s grey morning will show cowparsley,

  Hung all with shining drops, and the river will be

  Duller because of the all soddenness of things,

  Till the skylark breaks his reluctance, hangs shaking, and sings.

  IVOR GURNEY

  Anthem for Doomed Youth

  What passing bells for those who die as cattle?

  Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

  Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

  Can patter out their hasty orisons.

  No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,

  Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

  The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

  And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

  What candles may be held to speed them all?

  Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

  Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

  The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

  Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

  And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

  WILFRED OWEN

  Disabled

  He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

  And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

  Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

  Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

  Voices of play and pleasure after day,

  Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

  *

  About this time Town used to swing so gay

  When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,

  And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,

  – In the old times, before he threw away his knees.

  Now he will never feel again how slim

  Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands.

  All of them touch him like some queer disease.

  *

  There was an artist silly for his face,

  For it was younger than his youth, last year,

  Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

  He’s lost his colour very far from here,

  Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

  And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race

  And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

  One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg,

  After the matches, carried shoulder-high.

  It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,

  He thought he’d better join. – He wonders why.

  Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts,

  That’s why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,

  Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts

  He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;

  Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

  Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt

  And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears

  Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts

  For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;

  And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;

  Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

  And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

  *

  Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.

  Only a solemn man who brought him fruits

  Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

  *

  Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,

  And do what things the rules consider wise,

  And take whatever pity they may dole.

  Tonight he noticed how the women’s eyes

  Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.

  How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come

  And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

  WILFRED OWEN

  Dulce et Decorum Est

  Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

  Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

  And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

  Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

  But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

  Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

  Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.


  Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

  Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

  But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

  And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime …

  Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

  As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

  In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

  He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

  If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

  Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

  And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

  His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

  If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

  Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

  Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

  Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –

  My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

  To children ardent for some desperate glory,

  The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

  Pro patria more.

  WILFRED OWEN

  Insensibility

  I

  Happy are men who yet before they are killed

  Can let their veins run cold.

  Whom no compassion fleers

  Or makes their feet

  Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.

  The front line withers,

  But they are troops who fade, not flowers

  For poets’ tearful fooling:

  Men, gaps for filling:

  Losses who might have fought

  Longer; but no one bothers.

  II

  And some cease feeling

  Even themselves or for themselves.

  Dullness best solves

  The tease and doubt of shelling,

  And Chance’s strange arithmetic

  Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.

  They keep no check on armies’ decimation.

  III

  Happy are these who lose imagination:

  They have enough to carry with ammunition.

  Their spirit drags no pack,

  Their old wounds save with cold can not more ache.

  Having seen all things red,

  Their eyes are rid

  Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.

  And terror’s first constriction over,

  Their hearts remain small-drawn.

  Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle

  Now long since ironed,

  Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.

  IV

  Happy the soldier home, with not a notion

  How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,

  And many sighs are drained.

  Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:

  His days are worth forgetting more than not.

  He sings along the march

  Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,

  The long, forlorn, relentless trend

  From larger day to huger night.

  V

  We wise, who with a thought besmirch

  Blood over all our soul,

  How should we see our task

  But through his blunt and lashless eyes?

  Alive, he is not vital overmuch;

  Dying, not mortal overmuch;

  Nor sad, nor proud,

  Nor curious at all.

  He cannot tell

  Old men’s placidity from his.

  VI

  But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,

  That they should be as stones;

  Wretched are they, and mean

  With paucity that never was simplicity.

  By choice they made themselves immune

  To pity and whatever moans in man

  Before the last sea and the hapless stars;

  Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;

  Whatever shares

  The eternal reciprocity of tears.

  WILFRED OWEN

  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  S’io credessi che mia risposta fosse

  a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

  questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.

  Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo

  non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’ odo il vero,

  senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

  Let us go then, you and I,

  When the evening is spread out against the sky

  Like a patient etherised upon a table;

  Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

  The muttering retreats

  Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

  And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

  Streets that follow like a tedious argument

  Of insidious intent

  To lead you to an overwhelming question …

  Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’

  Let us go and make our visit.

  In the room the women come and go

  Talking of Michelangelo.

  The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

  The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

  Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

  Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

  Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

  Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

  And seeing that it was a soft October night,

  Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

  And indeed there will be time

  For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

  Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

  There will be time, there will be time

  To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

  There will be time to murder and create,

  And time for all the works and days of hands

  That lift and drop a question on your plate;

  Time for you and time for me,

  And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

  And for a hundred visions and revisions,

  Before the taking of a toast and tea.

  In the room the women come and go

  Talking of Michelangelo.

  And indeed there will be time

  To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’

  Time to turn back and descend the stair,

  With a bald spot in the middle of my hair –

  (They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)

  My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

  My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin –

  (They will say: But how his arms and legs are thin!’)

  Do I dare

  Disturb the universe?

  In a minute there is time

  For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

  For I have known them all already, known them all –

  Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

  I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

  I know the voices dying with a dying fall

  Beneath the music from a farther room.

  So how should I presume?

  And I have known the eyes already, known them all –

  The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

  And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

  When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

  Then how should I begin

  To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

  And how should I presume?

  And I have known the arms already, known them all –

  Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

  (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

  Is it perfume from a dress

  That makes me so digress?

  A
rms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

  And should I then presume?

  And how should I begin?

  . . . . .

  Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

  And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

  Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …

  I should have been a pair of ragged claws

  Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

  . . . . .

  And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

  Smoothed by long fingers,

  Asleep … tired … or it malingers,

  Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

  Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

  Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

  But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

  Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

  I am no prophet – and here’s no great matter;

  I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

  And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

  And in short, I was afraid.

  And would it have been worth it, after all,

  After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

  Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

  Would it have been worth while,

  To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

  To have squeezed the universe into a ball

  To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

  To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

  Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’ –

  If one, settling a pillow by her head,