The above painting was created whilst I was reading about the life story of Paul Nash. How uncanny it should be that Pete Ray (The Mowdog.blogspot.com) wrote the following poem without even knowing what I was reading! Thank you Pete.
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