YOU JUST GET USED TO IT...

 You Just Get Used To It…

Factory conditions.

Noise permanence.

Got used to it though.

Rumbling machinery.

Polishing bicycle handlebars to a gleam.

Industrial perdition.

Fumes intolerance.

Put up with it though,

The din and the flummery.

The future diminishing. 

Any ambition a dream.

Trench conditions.

Noise preponderance.

Got used to it though.

Shambling acrimony.

Suffering mustard gas in the front line.

Ingestion, inhalation.

Blind insouciance.

Put up with it though.

The hell with camaraderie,

The future vanishing.

Any hope benign.

Horror conditions.

Noise indifference.

Got used to it though, you see.

Choking cacophony.

Staring at torn limbs in mud’s revealing.

Putrefaction, infection.

Bland acceptance.

Put up with it though, you see.

The fear of ill chance.

The future banished.

No likely healing.

Chest condition.

Noise interference.

Got used to it though, you know.

Smoking, pitifully.

Wearing diseased lungs to gasping.

Deception, dissatisfaction.

Fumes dependence.

Put up with it though, you know.

The pain through reliance.

The future tarnished.

At life grasping…

Pete Ray

13th January 2021

This poem was meant to be about getting used to seeing death, horror and maiming during the First World War.

However, as I began to write it, my paternal grandfather came to mind, whose peacetime job had been polishing bicycle handlebars.

He fought in WW1 trenches and suffered during poison gas attacks.

After the Great War he wheezed, apparently due to a combination of the polish fumes, German gas and of course, cigarettes. 

He died in the mid-1930s and therefore I never met him…

So, this poem is dedicated to William Ernest Ray, my grandfather, of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment…