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  • From the Line
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From the Line

Roderick Watson Kerr

Have you seen men come from the Line,
Tottering, doddering, as if bad wine
Had drugged their very souls;
Their garments rent with holes
And caked with mud
And streaked with blood
Of others, or their own;
Haggard, weary-limbed and chilled to the bone,
Trudging aimless, hopeless, on
With listless eyes and faces drawn
Taut with woe?

Have you seen them aimless go
Bowed down with muddy pack
And muddy rifle slung on back,
And soaking overcoat,
Staring on with eyes that note
Nothing but the mire
Quenched of every fire?

Have you seen men when they come
From shell-holes filled with scum
Of mud and blood and flesh,
Where there’s nothing fresh
Like grass, or trees, or flowers,
And the numbing year-like hours
Lag on – drag on,
And the hopeless dawn
Brings naught but death, and rain –
The rain a fiend of pain
That scourges without end,
And Death, a smiling friend?

Have you seen men when they come from hell?
If not, – ah, well
Speak not with easy eloquence
That seems like sense
Of ‘War and its Necessity’!
And do not rant, I pray,
On ‘War’s Magnificent Nobility’!

If you’ve seen men come from the Line
You’ll know it’s Peace that is divine !
If you’ve not seen the things I’ve sung –
Let silence bind your tongue,
But, make all wars to cease,
And work, and work for Everlasting Peace !


Roderick Watson Kerr

from War Daubs (London: John Lane, 1919)

Reproduced by kind permission of the family of Roderick Watson Kerr.

Tags:

advice death despair peace Poetry By Heart Scotland post-1914 ruin tiredness trauma war World War I
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Roderick Watson Kerr1895 - 1960

Journalist, poet and co-founder of The Porpoise Press, Roderick Watson Kerr was a tank commander in the First World War. While his later poetry was in a satirical vein, his war poems are earnest and horrified.
More about Roderick Watson Kerr

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