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Aftermath
Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since
those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of
city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with
thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're
a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to
spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody
game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that
you'll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the
sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and
piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line
trench--
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a
hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to
happen again?'
Do you remember that hour of din before the
attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized
and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of
your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those
ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and
gay?
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring
that you'll never forget.Siegfried Sassoon
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