Dream

Out of the mind's mud runs

A narrow road through grassland.

Behind colourless trees,

Riflemen point nervous guns.

At the vanishing point tanks roar,

Approach horizons, burst into view.

Men flee and fall in the usual way,

Thomas, Owen, Arras, Vimy Ridge.

Thomas, now, did not seem to fear

Returning to the mud on a dry day,

Fine articulations stilled,

Sharpenings, refinings of his life,

Distinct before sleep, willed

Apart, now to merge.

The riflemen lie dead and distinct

On dry soil. Detail and colour blur

Grey, strange, black, white, grey

Colourless things which were

Green. Where is the viscous tree?

The Sambres canal? Dead fingers accusing sky?

How do our pastoral greens succeed

The holocaust? Their quiet graves the flames

In Flanders and above our beachheads?

Unknown many now to any, brown

And grey stones stand alike with separate names

Alike the cross and stars of David,

Now mown between, not down.

 ©Terry Hodgson2025