Page:Poems by Isaac Rosenberg (1922).djvu/125

 The air is loud with death, The dark air spurts with fire, The explosions ceaseless are. Timelessly now, some minutes past, These dead strode time with vigorous life, Till the shrapnel called "An end!" But not to all. In bleeding pangs Some borne on stretchers dreamed of home, Dear things, war-blotted from their hearts.

A man's brains splattered on A stretcher-bearer's face; His shook shoulders slipped their load, But when they bent to look again The drowning soul was sunk too deep For human tenderness.

They left this dead with the older dead, Stretched at the cross roads.

Burnt black by strange decay Their sinister faces lie, The lid over each eye; The grass and coloured clay More motion have than they, Joined to the great sunk silences.