Two Early War Poems from Robert Graves

Graves's Regiment, the Royal Welch Fusiliers at Mobilization

THE TRENCHES

(Heard in the Ranks)

Scratches in the dirt?

No, that sounds much too nice.

Oh, far too nice.

Seams, rather, of a Greyback Shirt,

And we're the little lice

Wriggling about in them a week or two,

Till one day, suddenly, from the blue

Something bloody and big will come

Like—watch this fingernail and thumb!—

Squash! and he needs no twice.

A DEAD BOCHE

To you who’d read my songs of War

 And only hear of blood and fame,

I’ll say (you’ve heard it said before)

“War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,

To-day I found in Mametz Wood

A certain cure for lust of blood:

Where, propped against a shattered trunk,

 In a great mess of things unclean,

Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk

With clothes and face a sodden green,

Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,

Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.

13 July 1915