Day 743: Last Post

This week begins the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. 

Today's poem is from UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who marked the occasion of the death of the last two remaining British veterans of the War, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, in this poem in 2009. But much more than that, the poem is a moving testament to all the lives lost in the War. She makes reference to Wilfred Owen's infamous 'Dulce Est Decorum' and the whole poem moves as a film reel in hard-hitting format.

Last Post - Carol Ann Duffy


In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
 
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud…
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home -
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now
to die and die and die.
Dulce - No - Decorum- No- Pro patria mori.
You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too -
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert -
and light a cigarette.
There's coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards,
then it would.