John Allan Wyeth
Sleep ripped apart in the shrilling blast of a shell
jerking me back into life—Dawn, and a dead
bleak silence split by a shrieking smash—one then,
every minute! Men run along the corridor—
“Say look in here.”
“It’s the General’s—”
“Naw it’s too swell,
it’s the Billeting Officer’s—look at the real brass bed—”
“Not so loud!”
“They’re asleep—”
A shadowy press of men
and tilted helmets at the open door.
My body swept throughout with a shattering spell
of fear—the fear that makes your heart like lead
your gullet sicken and the bowels creep
and slide like live things in your abdomen.
“Olly wake up!”
“Hey!—what did you wake me for?”
Aw Hell, why this is nothing—go to sleep.”
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Analysis (AI Assisted)
This poem is about a moment in war that isn’t about fighting, but about being caught in a space where war keeps happening around you, whether you’re ready for it or not. It starts in sleep, but that sleep is torn away by an explosion. There’s no gentle waking, just the shock of a shell and the way it forces the speaker back into reality. Dawn should be a time of quiet, but instead, it’s a series of impacts—one after another, predictable but still jarring.
The second stanza shifts from the immediate shock to something more detached. Soldiers move through a building, checking out rooms, making jokes about who used to sleep there. A real brass bed is worth pointing out—luxury in the middle of war. But there’s also caution. Someone reminds them not to be too loud. Other people are trying to sleep. It’s a strange contrast: the world is shaking apart outside, but here, in this space, people still cling to the idea of rest, still pretend that sleep is possible.
Then the fear sets in, not in words that try to dress it up, but in the physical ways it takes over the body. This isn’t fear as an idea—it’s something you feel in your chest, in your stomach, in the way everything inside you seems to turn against you. Fear isn’t a thought; it’s a thing that moves inside you and makes its own decisions. It isn’t something you fight; it’s something you endure.
The last part of the poem goes back to dialogue. Someone gets shaken awake and their reaction is frustration, maybe even anger. Being woken up is worse than the shells, because at least in sleep, you can pretend for a little while. The final line—“Aw Hell, why this is nothing—go to sleep”—says everything about how soldiers survive this kind of war. It’s not about bravery; it’s about shutting down, convincing yourself it isn’t as bad as it feels. Because if you let yourself believe that it is, how do you keep going?