Sleep ripped apart in the shrilling blast of a shell
jerking me back into life—Dawn, and a dead
bleak silence split by a shrieking smash—one then,
every minute! Men run along the corridor—
“Say look in here.”
“It’s the General’s—”
“Naw it’s too swell,
it’s the Billeting Officer’s—look at the real brass bed—”
“Not so loud!”
“They’re asleep—”
A shadowy press of men
and tilted helmets at the open door.
My body swept throughout with a shattering spell
of fear—the fear that makes your heart like lead
your gullet sicken and the bowels creep
and slide like live things in your abdomen.
“Olly wake up!”
“Hey!—what did you wake me for?”
Aw Hell, why this is nothing—go to sleep.”
(John Allan Wyeth)
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