Gassed Ww1 Poem by Sheena Blackhall

A line of stumbling snails with eyes bound up
They stagger over dead men, blinded youths
Whose comrades rot into the Belgian mud
Rat fodder, stepping stones for blind friends’ boots

Never to see another summer’s day
Nor watch the wild geese flying, line by line
All sight now sealed within the skull’s black cage
The horror film of shell, gun fire, and slime

A wheezy world is theirs, breath snagged and seared
Caught in the chest and drowning frothy green
Their future now shrunk back to touch, taste, smell
Each civi-soldier shrunk. Tomorrow, lean.