THE GREY: A NEW POEM ABOUT WORLD WAR ONE...

The Grey

The silence gnawed at my resolve,

Prodding at my erstwhile mettle

And I was thus unnerved, my valour perturbed,

Yet I stood my ground, as expected,

Just a number in the fodder

That was infantry…

The greyness bleached at the woods,

Invoking a spectral sparsity

But I was quite alert, my senses pert,

Thus I stood my ground, as instructed,

A dispensable number in the waste

That was infantry… 

A whistle blew.

And hampered by equipment

But by a tot of rum fired,

My expendable frame

Scrambled from a forward trench

Towards the charred, scarred landscape.

Then shells flew

Through smoke’s spew,

Disorientating, exasperating

And soon bodies lay askew.

Yet this number plodded on

Until a shallow crater was in view,

Into which my bleeding body I threw

And I lay, alone, one of a meagre few.

Alive, within The Grey,

Afraid beneath a stripped, blanched tree

I suffered the lot reserved 

For the infantry…

Pete Ray

April 2019

A poem written after looking at Sarah Ball’s painting which features grey and trees…

The landscape made me think of World War One.

And I was in it.

And I was replaceable.

I was, after all, infantry…