Poem for Week of Remembrance

Return

I have come home unnoticed; they are still;
No greetings pass between us; but they lie
Hearing the boom of guns along the hill,
Watching the flashes lick the glowering sky.

A wind of whispers comes from sightless faces;
"Have patience, and your bones shall share our bed."
Their voices haunt dark ways and ruined places,
Where once they spoke in deeds; who now are dead.

They wondered why I went; at last returning,
They guide my labouring feet through desolate mud.
And, choked with death, yet in their eyes discerning
My living strength; they are quickened in my blood.

By Siegfried Sassoon, March 1917