Have you forgotten yet?... <br />For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days, <br />Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways: <br />And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow <br />Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, <br />Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare. <br />But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game... <br />Have you forgotten yet?... <br />Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget. <br /> <br />Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz-- <br />The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets? <br />Do you remember the rats; and the stench <br />Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-- <br />And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? <br />Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?' <br /> <br />Do you remember that hour of din before the attack-- <br />And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then <br />As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men? <br />Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back <br />With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey <br />Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay? <br /> <br />Have you forgotten yet?... <br />Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.<br /><br />Siegfried Sassoon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/aftermath/
