I feel as though I’d sent a runner back
With news that we were being strafed like Hell ...
And he’d reported: “Everything O. K.”
Something’s the matter: either you can’t see,
Or else you see, and cannot write—that’s worse.
Hang it, you can’t have clean forgotten things
You went to bed with, woke with, smelt and felt,
All those long months of boredom streaked with fear:
Mud, cold, fatigue, sweat, nerve-strain, sleeplessness,
And men’s excreta viscid in the rain,