Bivouacs

In Somecourt Wood, in Somecourt Wood, The nightingales sang all night, The stars were tangled in the trees And marvellous intricacies Of leaf and branch and song and light Made magic stir in Somecourt Wood.

In Somecourt Wood, in Somecourt Wood, We slithered in a foot of mire, The moisture squelching in our boots; We stumbled over tangled roots, And ruts and stakes and hidden wire, Till marvellous intricacies Of human speech, in divers keys, Made ebb and flow thro’ Somecourt Wood.

In Somecourt Wood, in Somecourt Wood We bivouacked and slept the night, The nightingales sang the same As they had sung before we came. ‘Mid leaf and branch and song and light And falling dew and watching star. And all the million things which are About us and above us took No more regard of us than We take in some small midge’s span Of life, albeit our gunfire shook The very air in Somecourt Wood.

In Somecourt Wood, in Somecourt Wood, I rose while all the others slept, I seized a star-beam and I crept Along it and more far along Till I arrived where throbbing song Of star and bird and wind and rain But gathered ere I came the dust Of many stars, and if you must Know what I wanted with it, hear I keep is as a souvenir Of that same night in Somecourt Wood.

In Somecourt Wood, in Somecourt Wood, The cuckoo wakened me at dawn, The man beside me muttered, “Hell!” But half a dozen larks as well Sang in the blue–the curtain drawn Across where all the stars had been Was interlaced with tender green, The birds sang, and I said that if One didn’t wake so cold and stiff It would be grand in Somecourt Wood

And then the man beside me spoke, But what he said about it broke The magic spell in Somecourt Wood.