Just five or six still standing.
Five or six from fifty or sixty thousand.
The rest? –
Mown down mercilessly
By sharp and unforgiving steel:
Shorn, shredded and spat out
Or ground under relentless wheels.
The miracle: that these solitary sentinels
Survived at all
When the grim reaper came for them,
Scything whole divisions in one fell swoop,
Driving a broad swath,
Right through the ranks
From front to rear.
Now the frontline has moved on afar
And the noise of one-sided battle
Has subsided to a dull rumble
From a roar.
No army medical corps
To patch up and mend;
No nurses to minister
‘Til the shipping up the line
And home to a hero’s welcome…
Wasteland.
Just a wasteland.
A wasteland with arterial maize-blood
Forming congealed rivers in furrows
Striping the field with parallel yellow: -
After the harvest,
Come winter,
And the harrow.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem