Five Poems, by Tracy Patrick

A French Highway, by John Nash (UK) 1918

A French Highway
 
if
there was a beginning
              or an end
it has been obliterated
              only one thought exists
as monotonous
              as a hymn
as heavy as sodden boots
              myopic
as the miniaturist’s brush
              it drips
from the edges of greatcoats
              stinks
like shite from a horse’s arse
              you can see
the way it repeats itself
              over and over
stubbornly refuses to change
              the subject
the best a man can do is avert
              his eyes
from the clouds’ sunken ribs
              concentrate
not on nouns but conjunctions
              the task
of getting to the next
                                       and             

​

Ypres Salient, Dawn, by John Louis Ginnett (UK) 1918

Salient at Dawn
 
Its isolated colours are surreal
as flowers: the forget-me-nots that bloom
in cavities of broken teeth; the pale creep
of lavender that pools around the still heart.
Even the jaundiced skin is pin-pricked
with yellow stars, sparkling like shrapnel
in the emptied dawn, so that each embittered
scar speaks of beauty beaten-down,
its trampled jaw graced with a rosy bruise. 
While, above it all, in the sky’s abandoned skull,
a clutch of pale gold irises sifts this slough
of memories, turns its sunken face from hell.

The Kensingtons at Laventie, by Eric Henri Kennington (UK) 1915

The Waiting
 
I
prone on a broken door on white snow
the man in the blue balaclava
lets tomorrow pass
 
II
a Gewehr 98 or perhaps a Mauser slung
on his back, polished brass helmet swinging
from his pack, killer of a killer
 
III
grey-shawled and sombre-eyed
he and a red-cloaked soldier
step quietly through the underworld
 
IV
faceless, almost, under his cap

V
this one, lips pressed tight, bites down
the unbidden sounds. he has the darkest eyes
 
VI
the flat priestly face of a chaplain, clenching his cape
clinging to his vestments
 
VII
this short one has a dirty look about him
scarf dulled with blood.
his eyes drill the snow
try to bring up what is gone 
 
VIII
a poet (maybe) uses his rifle like a crozier
composes an ashen refrain
the word prayer assumes too much
 
VIIII
here then is the hero the world wants
the indispensable sniper’s eye
he will also lend you his spare fork
 
X
standing by
this one’s slim waist and flushed face could be taken for a woman’s
knows all too well the pity

The Field of Passchendaele, by Paul Nash (UK) 1917

Field of Passchendaele
 
If we could peer from our sanctified gallery
Into his charcoal features
 
And if he bestowed on us a last
Garbled utterance
 
Asked us to get rid of all this gore and grey
Paint in some greenery
 
Turn him into a simple farm boy
Dozing in the straw
 
If he should warn us gently, but sternly
That this is no place for loafers
 
That the world did not hold its fire for lovers
Who slipped off into the woods
 
We might pity his ramblings, tell him
That, soon, the horses will be back with the plough
 
Or else find out his name and rank
Trace his kin and home, and make a story of his bones
 
Then he’ll remind us that he is only an outline
A perspective, frozen in time
 
And we’ll nod, comment on the use of tone
And light, and move quietly on

The Cemetery, Etaples by John Lavery (Ireland) 1919

Cemetery Etaples
 
There are no guns now, only an echoing thud,   
the memory of it growing distant,
the way thunder retreats with the rain.
A thin train bisects the landscape,
leaving its hang of smoke in the air
like a soldier’s last cigarette, the half-smoked end
 
still glowing somewhere, like the end   
of everything. On cue, the women come, the small thud   
of their feet like an epilogue through sulphur-ridden air,   
scarves bandaged round their heads, their distant   
eyes and figures as hushed as the brown-grey landscape,   
still shedding its futility of mud and rain.  
 
Women tending the graves, whose only memory is rain,   
crude graves without a flattery of white marble to mark their end,  
honest graves, that do not rise monumental from the landscape 
but are merged in it, each plain brown cross like the thud   
of hail on a forest floor, on mud barely dried, the distant    
shapeless rows disappearing into air    
 
that cannot yet bear the weight of life, a splintered air    
made of debris, unprepared for their forgiving rain,   
unable to bear the presence of these women and the distant    
greenness, how it crawls across the horizon’s end, 
inches through No Man’s Land, muffling each dismembered thud.  
The women pour their care on graves not yet tarnished by a landscape   
 
that makes manicure of slaughter. No, this landscape
is all brown death, no green neatness to disguise the sorry air
of innocence. Here and there, a wreath breaks the monotony like a thud,
and a woman kneels. Others are talking of the break in the rain,
of the stew prepared on Sunday and where to get a fresh end
of meat, and how the épicerie has run out of stockings, and of the distant
 
days yet to come, and how she will cope – eyes grown distant –
how will she cope amidst the unthinkable, in a landscape
filled with row upon soft row of bones, now that the war is at an end 
and there is nothing left to fight        for? Or perhaps she doesn’t trouble the air
at all with thoughts of what to tell the children, of rain-                             
splattered ink on muddy pages, or questions that drop with a soft thud
 
thud in the dead of night. In time all will grow distant,
and she will not know if she is freer or happier. The landscape 
will keep its silence, as though peace was a dream, not the promised end.

Tracy Patrick

Tracy Patrick is from Paisley, Scotland. She has been vegan for twenty plus years. Her interests include wildlife gardening, growing her own veg, and finding creative solutions to sustainable living. She is the support animal to one cat, Eliot. She was a VAD nurse, peace campaigner and munition worker in the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall's World War One Centenary shows in Glasgow. It is the oldest surviving music hall in the world.

These poems have previously been published in Painting San Romano (earth love press 2022). 

​The copyright of these images belongs to Imperial War Museum, London. Noncommercial educational use is permitted.