A NEW POEM ABOUT A GERMAN WORLD WAR 1 POSTCARD...

Poised…

Her pen is poised.

She wonders what to write…

Of trivia? The opera? The theatre?

Or of her feelings, contrite?

Her script will be scrutinised

But between the lines he will read

Of longing, of love, of trepidation, albeit sanitised,

For to censorship she must pay heed…

Her writing has paused

And she recalls her Soldat, stylised,

Proud in uniform, heading west,

His gallantry romanticised;

Thus his beautifully scripted response

From The Front, a slaughterhouse despised,

Is superficial, diluted, awry,

A snooping censor’s checks thus satisfied…

And he wipes the tears

With a mud-caked sleeve

And hides the fears

And the need to grieve;

And he ignores the vile stench

Of rotting bodies in cloying mire

And huddles in terror deep in a trench, 

Beneath shells and shrapnel and gas and fire…

Yet the image of her Soldat must endure

And his image of her is survival’s sole lure… 

Pete Ray

June 2019

A World War 1 postcard sent by a German soldier in December 1915…

A generally produced card with personal connotations…