# Aftermath

Have you forgotten yet?…

For the world’s events have rumbled on since those
gagged days,

Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city ways:

And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with
thoughts that flow

Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you’re a man
reprieved to go,

Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same,—and War’s a bloody game,…

Have you forgotten yet?…

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that
you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector
at Mametz,—

The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled
sandbags on parapets?

Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,—

And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with
a hopeless rain?

Do you ever stop and ask, “Is it all going to happen again?”

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack,—

And the anger, the blind compassion that seized
and shook you then

As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces
of your men?

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