POEMS
From the top of the hill I looked down on the beautiful, the gorgeous, the superhuman and monstrous landscape of the superb exulting war.
There were no trees anywhere, nor any grasses or green thickets, nor any birds singing, nor any whisper or flutter of any little busy creatures.
There was no shelter for field mice or rabbits, squirrels or men.
The earth was naked and on its naked body crawled things of iron.
It was evening. The long valley was bathed in blue shadow and through the shadow, as if swimming, I saw the iron armies moving.
And iron rivers poured through the wilderness that was peopled with a phantom iron host.
Lights gleamed down there, a thousand machine eyes winked.
The sun was setting, gilding the smooth crests of the surging hills. The red tents clustering on their naked yellow sides were like scarlet flowers burning in a shining desert of hills.
Against the sunset, along the sharp edge of a hill, a strange regiment was moving in single file, a regiment of monsters.
They moved slowly along on their stomachs,
Dragging themselves forward by their ears.
Their great encircling ears moved round and round like wheels.
They were big and very heavy and heavily armoured.
Obscene crabs, armoured toads, big as houses,
They moved slowly forward, crushing under their bellies whatever stood in their way.
A flock of aeroplanes was flying home, a flight of wild ducks with iron wings.
They passed over the monstrous regiment with a roar and disappeared.
I looked down, searching for a familiar thing, a leaf, a tuft of grass, a caterpillar; but the ground dropped away in darkness before my feet, that were planted on a heap of stones.
A path, the old deserted way of cattle, showed below beyond the gaping caverns of abandoned dug-outs, where men had once lived underground. And along the path a German prisoner was stumbling, driven by a black man on a horse.
The black man wore a turban, and he drove the prisoner before him as one drives an animal to market.
These three—the prisoner, the black man and the horse—seemed to have wandered into the landscape by mistake. They were the only creatures of their kind anywhere.
Where had they come from and where were they going in that wilderness of iron with night falling?
The German stumbled on heavily beneath the nose of his captor’s horse. I could see the pallid disc of his face thrust forward, and the exhausted lurching of his clumsy body.
He did not look to the right or left, but watching him I saw him trip over a battered iron helmet and an old boot that lay in his way.
Two wooden crosses showed just ahead of him, sticking out of the rough ground.
The three passed in silence.
They passed like ghosts into the deepening shadow of the valley, where the panorama of invisible phantom armies moved, as if swimming.
And as I watched I heard the faint music of bagpipes, and thought that I heard the sound of invisible men marching.
The crests of the naked hills were still touched with gold.
Above the winking eyes of the prodigious war the fragile crescent of the moon floated serene in the perfect sky.