Finding myself somewhat dissatisfied with yesterday's offering from Eric Bogle as a 'poem' (whatever power it might - certainly does - draw from the subject matter, and from the quiet passion of his live performance of the piece), I looked around for a First War poem written at the time, and naturally turned first to Wilfred Owen.
This is probably one of his lesser known pieces, but I really like it - not least because it's not really specific to the War; but it does a brilliant job of evoking that disordered mental state that we all encounter sometimes on waking, or when feverish.
Conscious
His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed.
His eyes come open with a pull of will,
Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.
A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill...
How smooth the floor of the ward is! What a rug!
And who's that talking, somewhere out of sight?
Why are they laughing? What's inside that jug?
"Nurse! Doctor!" "Yes; all right, all right."
But sudden dusk bewilders all the air.
There seems no time to want a drink of water.
Nurse looks so far away. And everywhere
Music and roses burnt through crimson slaughter.
Cold; cold; he's cold; and yet so hot:
And there's no light to see the voices by,
No time to dream, to ask - he knows not what.
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
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