They were writing for the Poetry bookshops,
Poetry no doubt well worth reading.
Over in Flanders, in the wet weather,
Love lay bleeding!
If you carefully record your emotions,
Lyric or Sonnet that haunts your head,
Will you revive for me over in Flanders
Love stone dead?
WILD WEATHER
Wild weather, O my heart, and strong winds beating
The great trees straining in their despair.
The crumpled leaves that fall and flee
Whistle like ghosts across the air.
And how should I, lone mortal fleeting,
Not be uprooted by winds that, meeting,
Wrench at my limbs to cast them in the sea!
Wild weather, O my heart, for all my lovers,
The lads I loved in the time entombed,
Crumpled and stark against trench and tree,
Whistle like leaves through the woods engloomed.
There all year long my poor ghost hovers,
Never to see what the darkness covers,
The faces I loved of old that so loved me.
BROKEN BODIES
Not for the broken bodies,
When the War is over and done,
For the miserable eyes that never
Again shall see the sun;
Not for the broken bodies
Crawling over the land,
The patchwork limbs, the shoddies,
Not for the broken bodies,
Dear Lord, we crave your hand.
Not for the broken bodies,
We pray your dearest aid,
When the ghost of War for ever
Is levelled at last and laid;
Not for the broken bodies
That wrought their sorrowful parts
Our chiefest need of God is,
Not for the broken bodies,
Dear Lord—the broken hearts!