Sassoon At The Front Poem by Roy Blokker

He did not believe in God, not here,
At least not God as we think of Him:
Sink or swim or dusty clod in motion
Or blood soaked screaming in the barren wood.
Where was room for God walking among
These corpses and the guns, sunlight stalking
All the killers and their victims in equal measure
Like a treasure dragon-guarded day and night?
Instead was noise and dust and fear, cacophony
And candidates for corpsehood all around
In a surging ocean, all afloat, bobble-headed heroes,
Poetry in the Pity, etching words across his brow
As if his friend could avoid, so late, the bullet;
If time now, stretching out old bones trapped
In his youthful body, let him write the things he should.
The God he saw was invisible, gone, and wounded,
Abandoning men to the sound of their own devices,
So easily divisible, His job done so long, long ago,
A once fertile no longer viable winter crop
Culled and chafed. The words came. In
Torrents to make old Noah proud, afloat and safe
At least upon the broken bone chalky sea
And ending with these: “O Jesus, make it stop! ”