Trenches: St Eloi by Thomas Ernest Hulme

(Abbreviated from the Conversation of Mr TEH)

Over the flat slopes of St Eloi
A wide wall of sand bags.
Night,
In the silence desultory men
Pottering over small fires, cleaning their mess-tins:
To and fro, from the lines,
Men walk as on Piccadilly,
Making paths in the dark,
Through scattered dead horses,
Over a dead Belgian’s belly.

The Germans have rockets. The English have no rockets.
Behind the line, cannon, hidden, lying back miles.
Beyond the line, chaos:

My mind is a corridor. The minds about me are corridors.
Nothing suggests itself. There is nothing to do but keep on.

From: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/10/poem-of-the-week-t-e-hulme

Date: 1915

By: Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883-1917)

Tags: 1915, over the flat slopes of st eloi, poetry, thomas ernest hulme, trenches: st eloi