The Soldier's Girl Poem by Sheena Blackhall

In my breast pouch a picture lies
My smiling girl with cornflower eyes
And in my head I hear sweet sighs
Drop from her lips of cherry

But in the moonlight, stark and chill
When corpses hung on barbed wire thrill
As shrapnel makes its second kill
Dark thoughts swarm round to harry

I think of cripples, widowed men
Farmers and shepherds of the glen
Miners and weavers..What of them
At home, free to make merry?

She’s meek...the easier to rule
She’s trusting..Easier to fool
And pure...how might the lecher drool
And make of her his quarry?

The horrors of the battlefield
I meet, because I dare not yield
But worse, the foes at home, concealed
And her alone, unwary.