The Life of Harry Patch

1.

A curve is a straight line caught bending
and this one runs under the kitchen window
where the bright eyes of your mum and dad
might tlash any minute and find you down
on all fours, stomach hard to the ground,
slinking along a turrow between the potatoes
and dead set on a prospect of rich pickings,
the good apple trees and plum trees and pears,
anyithing sweet and juicy you might now be
able to nibble around the back and leave
hanging as though nothing had touched it,
if only it were possible to stand upright
in so much clear light with those eyes
beady in the window and not catch a packet.

2.

Patch, Harry Patch, that's a good name,
Shakespearean, it might be one of Hal's men
at Agincourt or not far of, although in fact
it starts life and belongs in Combe Down
with your dad's trade in the canary limestone
which turns to grey and hardens when it meets
the light, perfect for Regency Bath and you too
since no one these days thinks about the danger
of playing in quarries when the workmen go
not even of prodding and peling with stones
the wasps' nests perched on rough ledges
or dropped from the ceiling on stalks
although god knows it means having to shift
tout de suite and still get stung on arms and taces.

3.

First the hard facts of not wanting to fight,
and the kindness of deciding to shoot men
in the legs but no higher unless needs must,
and the liking among comrades which is truly
as deep as love without that particular name,
then Pilckem Ridge and Langemarck and across
the Steenbeek since none of the above can change
what comes next, which is a lad trom A Company
shrapnel has ripped open from shoulder to waist
who begs you "Shoot me", but is good as dead
already, and whose final word is "Mother",
which you hear because you kneel a minute
hold one finger of his hand, and then remember orders
to keep pressing on, support the infantry ahead.

4.

After the beautiful crowd to unveil the memorial
and no putt left in the lungs to sing O Valiant Hearts'
or say aloud the names of triends and one cousin,
the butcher and chimney sweep, a tarmer, a carpenter,
work comes up the VWills Tower in Bristol and there
thunderstorms are a danger, so bad ihat lightning
one day hammers Great George and knocks down
the toreman who can't use his hand three weeks
later as yoU recall, along with the way that strike
burned all trace of oxygen trom the air, it must have,
given the definite stink of sulphur and a second
or two later the shy wave ot a breeze returning
along with roottops below, and moss, and rain
fading the green Mendip Hills and blue Severn.

5.

You growa moustache, check the mirror, nofice
you're forty years old, then next day shave it off,
check the mirror again and find you're seventy,
but life is like that now, suddenly and gradually
everyone you know dies and still comes to visit
or you head back to them, if's noi clear which
only where it happens: a safe bedroom upstairs
on the face of it, although when you sit late
whispering with the other boys in the lewis team,
smoking your pipe upside-down to hide the fire,
and the nurses on night duty bring folded sheels
to store in the linen cupboard opposite, all it takes
is someone switching on the light - there is that flash,
or was until you said, and the staff blacked the window.