Isaac Rosenberg
The plunging limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with their rusty freight,
Stuck out like many crowns of thorns,
And the rusty stakes like sceptres old
To stay the flood of brutish men
Upon our brothers dear.
The wheels lurched over sprawled dead
But pained them not, though their bones crunched,
Their shut mouths made no moan.
They lie there huddled, friend and foeman,
Man born of man, and born of woman,
And shells go crying over them
From night till night and now.
Earth has waited for them,
All the time of their growth
Fretting for their decay:
Now she has them at last!
In the strength of their strength
Suspended—stopped and held.
What fierce imaginings their dark souls lit?
Earth! have they gone into you!
Somewhere they must have gone,
And flung on your hard back
Is their soul’s sack
Emptied of God-ancestralled essences.
Who hurled them out? Who hurled?
None saw their spirits’ shadow shake the grass,
Or stood aside for the half used life to pass
Out of those doomed nostrils and the doomed mouth,
When the swift iron burning bee
Drained the wild honey of their youth.
What of us who, flung on the shrieking pyre,
Walk, our usual thoughts untouched,
Our lucky limbs as on ichor fed,
Immortal seeming ever?
Perhaps when the flames beat loud on us,
A fear may choke in our veins
And the startled blood may stop.
The air is loud with death,
The dark air spurts with fire,
The explosions ceaseless are.
Timelessly now, some minutes past,
Those dead strode time with vigorous life,
Till the shrapnel called `An end!’
But not to all. In bleeding pangs
Some borne on stretchers dreamed of home,
Dear things, war-blotted from their hearts.
Maniac Earth! howling and flying, your bowel
Seared by the jagged fire, the iron love,
The impetuous storm of savage love.
Dark Earth! dark Heavens! swinging in chemic smoke,
What dead are born when you kiss each soundless soul
With lightning and thunder from your mined heart,
Which man’s self dug, and his blind fingers loosed?
A man’s brains splattered on
A stretcher-bearer’s face;
His shook shoulders slipped their load,
But when they bent to look again
The drowning soul was sunk too deep
For human tenderness.
They left this dead with the older dead,
Stretched at the cross roads.
Burnt black by strange decay
Their sinister faces lie,
The lid over each eye,
The grass and coloured clay
More motion have than they,
Joined to the great sunk silences.
Here is one not long dead;
His dark hearing caught our far wheels,
And the choked soul stretched weak hands
To reach the living word the far wheels said,
The blood-dazed intelligence beating for light,
Crying through the suspense of the far torturing wheels
Swift for the end to break
Or the wheels to break,
Cried as the tide of the world broke over his sight.
Will they come? Will they ever come?
Even as the mixed hoofs of the mules,
The quivering-bellied mules,
And the rushing wheels all mixed
With his tortured upturned sight.
So we crashed round the bend,
We heard his weak scream,
We heard his very last sound,
And our wheels grazed his dead face.
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem explores the dissonance between human experience and the violence of war, using both humor and grim irony to convey the fragility of life and the absurdity of conflict. The opening line, “The darkness crumbles away,” introduces a world where the passage of time continues relentlessly, yet this “druid Time” seems unchanged, offering no solace or resolution. The “live thing” that leaps into the narrator’s hand is described as a “queer sardonic rat,” which immediately introduces an unsettling and unexpected presence in the midst of the narrator’s contemplations. This rat, a creature often associated with filth and disease, symbolizes survival and adaptability in a world that seems beyond reason.
The image of the narrator pulling a poppy and placing it behind their ear speaks to the ritual of remembering or honoring, yet this action feels disconnected from the true tragedy of war. The narrator imagines that, had the rat been caught by others, it would be shot—suggesting the absurdity of targeting a creature simply for existing in a time of war. This is further emphasized by the rat’s “cosmopolitan sympathies,” hinting at the universal and non-partisan nature of suffering, even in the face of brutal conflict.
The contrast between the “haughty athletes” and the rat suggests a bitter irony—those who are strong and healthy, with the world at their feet, are the very ones who are more likely to die in the “torn fields of France,” while the rat, insignificant and lowly, survives. The “shrinking iron and flame” conjures the horrors of warfare, but the rat seems to pass through it unscathed, a passive observer of human chaos.
The poppies, symbolic of both remembrance and the death that occurs during war, are “ever dropping,” a constant reminder of loss. Yet, the narrator’s poppy, “safe” behind the ear, remains untouched—symbolizing the disconnection or detachment the speaker feels from the broader reality of war and death, while the “men’s veins” are forever intertwined with death’s reminders.
In its blend of the personal and the grotesque, this poem highlights the futility of war, the randomness of survival, and the way small, seemingly insignificant things—like a rat or a poppy—can offer moments of dark humor or fleeting comfort amidst devastation. The use of the rat and the poppy creates a stark contrast between life’s brutal realities and fleeting symbols of peace or remembrance. It’s a meditation on the absurdity of war, human mortality, and the inescapable march of time.