Break of day in the trenches

Isaac Rosenberg

The darkness crumbles away. 
It is the same old druid Time as ever, 
Only a live thing leaps my hand, 
A queer sardonic rat, 
As I pull the parapet’s poppy 
To stick behind my ear. 
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew 
Your cosmopolitan sympathies. 
Now you have touched this English hand 
You will do the same to a German 
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure 
To cross the sleeping green between. 
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass 
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, 
Less chanced than you for life, 
Bonds to the whims of murder, 
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, 
The torn fields of France. 
What do you see in our eyes 
At the shrieking iron and flame 
Hurled through still heavens? 
What quaver—what heart aghast? 
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins 
Drop, and are ever dropping; 
But mine in my ear is safe— 
Just a little white with the dust.