I can never get them

to not go,
to not rise up out of the ditches that had been
gouged out of the chalky soil near that sluggish river,
muddy way stations that had been dug
with the swaggering confidence
that they would be temporary.
They never hear my warning
to stay down
because the ones over there aren't dead,
but very much alive and desperate
to dig themselves out of their involuntary graves,
having spent a week of riding out the
storm of metal and gas,
and ready to man their
fire positions in a frenzy of terror and release.
They don't know that the Newfoundlanders
are going to be slaughtered or mutilated to the last man,
or that the Merseyside Pals are about to cease to exist,
or that he's going to have his jaw shot away,
or that the man over there is going to make the nurses
almost faint when they see him,
or that the man next to him is headed
for the Moribund Tent and a shot of morphine
and a smiling nurse to hold his hand as he slips away.
They'll always be brave, they'll always do what Haig
told them, and they'll always be
annihilated for it.
And no matter how many times I hope it will be otherwise,
that 19 year old kid always gets his Victoria Cross
posthumously.