Trench Warfare

From trench to trench

You followed me, to speed

My penance at the midnight hour of life,

Once all was lost, and mine the greater need

You came again, to gloat, and turn the knife.

 

It’s always been the same

A thrust, then grief;

A few yards forward, then dig in, and damn the cost,

We worried at the borders of belief

To count advantage first, but never loss!

 

I can’t remember peace,

There’s never been

A time for me when war was not the game,

Each word a bullet, spat from lips that screamed;

You drank your deadly cocktails, then took aim.

 

‘Til I was sorely wounded,

Sick at heart,

And pounded by the mortars of your mind;

I slept in foxholes, waking with a start

To seek relief in silence, marking time.

 

While tanks, like thunder

Rolled across my soul

To leave their shadow-tracks upon my brain,

My thoughts were camouflaged, and left untold,

And worked at night, while you explored your pain.

 

I lost my way, as if

I’d ever known

The forward from the back, the bleak terrain

That you and I once conquered, then disowned

Has left me not a landmark I could claim.

 

And so to this, the shadow

That at night

Will beckon me toward some ancient death,

When life has lost its paltry appetite

And I, the walking wounded, give it breath.

 

David Lewis Paget