During my shift at the WWI memorial installation “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” by artist Paul Cummins at the Tower of London, we “planted” 5,000 ceramic poppies. Well, 5,000 minus a few.
A very few. This seems to me like a remarkably small number of breakages and unusables.
My arms have mutinied against me, — brutes!
My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
My back’s been stiff for hours, damned hours.
Death never gives his squad a Stand-At-Ease.
I can’t read. There: it’s no use. Take your book.
A short life and a merry one, my buck!
We said we’d hate to grow dead-old. But now,
Not to live old seems awful: Not to renew
My boyhood with my boys, and teach ’em hitting,
Shooting, and hunting, — all the arts of hurting!
–Well, that’s what I learnt. That, and making money.
Your fifty years in store seem none too many,
But I’ve five minutes. God! For just two years
To help myself to this good air of yours!
One Spring! Is one too hard to spare? Too long?
Spring air would find its own way to my lung,
And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.
* * *
Yes, there’s the orderly. He’ll change the sheets
When I’m lugged out. Oh, couldn’t I do that?
Here in this coffin of a bed, I’ve thought
I’d like to kneel and sweep his floors for ever, —
And ask no nights off when the bustle’s over,
For I’d enjoy the dirt. Who’s prejudiced
Against a grimed hand when his own’s quite dust, —
Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn?
Dear dust–in rooms, on roads, on faces’ tan!
I’d love to be a sweep’s boy, black as Town;
Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?
A flea would do. If one chap wasn’t bloody,
Or went stone-cold, I’d find another body.
* * *
Which I shan’t manage now. Unless it’s yours.
I shall stay in you, friend for some few hours.
You’ll feel my heavy spirit chill your chest,
And climb your throat on sobs until it’s chased
On sighs, and wiped from off your lips by wind.
I think on your rich breathing, brother, I’ll be weaned
To do without what blood remained me from my wound.
–Wilfred Owen, “Wild With All Regrets” (To Siegfried Sassoon), December 5, 1917
Thank you.