T.E. HULME: TRENCHES, ST ELOI

T.E. Hulme
(1883 – 1917)

Trenches: St Eloi

Over the flat slopes of St Eloi
A wide wall of sand bags.
Night,
In the silence desultory men
Pottering over small fires, cleaning their mess- tins:
To and fro, from the lines,
Men walk as on Piccadilly,
Making paths in the dark,
Through scattered dead horses,
Over a dead Belgian’s belly.

The Germans have rockets. The English have no rockets.
Behind the line, cannon, hidden, lying back miles.
Behind the line, chaos:

My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors.
Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on.

T.E. Hulme poetry
fleursdumal.nl magazine

More in: Archive G-H, Hulme, T.E., WAR & PEACE