(Poet and painter born in Bristol 1890, died on the Western Front April 1918. London art studio photo-portrait / National Portrait Gallery / 1917)
The lips are full, fish-like,
a deep gulped breath in-held against the body’s bitter will;
bottom lip swollen, mouthy as a carp,
or a trumpeter’s lips bilged from over-practice.
The eyes expressionless, an inured glaze,
a mildewed middle-distance empty stare,
the glassy focus a shell-shattering nowhere.
The sardonic rat has long riddled through
this seeing, the image stored and stowed inside,
the mind already blown, brimming,
and everything now numbed, anaesthetised.
Later, a dawn raid, your bantam-body unidentified.
