Hill 60.

( For my mother, and in memory
of Harry Ditchfield 1883-1915.)


I am afraid I have no wars,
Only thoughts of how it might have been.
My grandfather died at the age of thirty-two,
Shot through the head by a sniper's bullet
In a cold and dirty trench at Hill 60.
His thoughts, his future, his aspirations, his love,
All died in foreign mud, before even I was conceived.
Now he sleeps in a Belgium churchyard,
In the little village of Loker, near Kemmel.
We have the one and only photograph of him,
Held together with sellotape and fading at the edges;
On his brow, a kiss still lingers,
From a daughter who, I think, has suffered by his absence.
We even have a photograph of his grave,
And in the desk draw, in my mothers home,
There lie the tattered remnants of his last letter,
Written in pencil, written in the trenches,
As shells exploded all about him, and bullets
Whistled over-head, and songbirds wept
In the severed limbs of dead trees.
"Goodbye Harry," a friend at home had said. "Good luck."
"I shan't return," he replied, "I shan't be coming home."
In the noise of war that filled men’s ears with dread,
And in smoke that made them blind, he wrote:
"...and give my love to my little girl."

Poem by Carol Ann Duffy about Harry Patch.

LAST POST

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.