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Focus on Robert Graves and His Contemporaries - Vol. 2 No. 4
Harlech
War has drawn tightly to a close. Where am I?
Standing in the rougher stretches
Under tors
The breeze disturbs the tufty, brazen grass, Disturbs the shadows:
Fingers and thumbs of astringent green;
The dusk
That ancient sunlight never sees.
The glow will glow less and less
Where my stare beats down
Time and time again, compounding the patch I watch; The soil; hallowed land.
Red hot leaf; red poppy, hard, rusty bomb:
Reminds me of
Me--not yet hit, a dud,
I squeeze it in my shaking hand.
Through the rock the carillons of Sunday
Radiate from chapel. I hasten
To the door when all is over;
The memory of the war is grand,
But to my knees I fall--I must;
My thoughts, my soul, hasten around this land.
How could I love Her in that atmosphere?
She pushed me into war
And then she made me write In horrid inspiration.
But that will not be.
In all I did, I fathered all my tricks; Against myself I had to fight,
And war and poetry did not bear relation.
University of Angers, France