Blood Fills the Trench
Night fears, gloomy and verve-wracking,
Bayonets' importance lost.
We are in low spirits, wounded or dead in
The Trench, blood and suspense encourage
Uncertainty.
Rats, repulsive and evil devoured the lost
Who were buried without chance.
Unpolished coffins await the killed, the
Ones who rot in the Trenches.
The enemy, with guns and artillery
Encourage the War.
Bombardment.
Bombs.
Gas.
The alive have suffocated,
The alive have met Death.
Dawn has yet to come, bayonets
Jabbing the wounded.
Day looks like a raging beast;
Evil, repulsive, devoured.
The men are tired,
The fun of War now
Meaningless words:
Dementing, gloomy.
Enemy lines advance, artillery and
Weapons create fountains of
Mud and iron.
Sleep is wished for, the silent blanket
Of calmer atmosphere, where it will end.
The air becomes tense but calmer, heart thumps deadened by silence.
An atmosphere of claustrophobia
Silenced by howls and flashes of exploding light.
Explosions tear the uniform,
The tanks shoot splinters.
Gapped knife tears flesh, blood
Fills the Trench.
Hardly a man speaks, glowering like
Mad dogs, hands tremble on weapons.
Time is motionless, fumes and
Explosions strain to cease the alive.
Death chases us around every corner,
Every movement, every retreat.
The Trenches, broken bits and craters, blood and teeth scattered.
Muscles ache, the fight, the War grows with ferocity.
Fear, madness, greed of life has terrifically
Binding strain, casualties increasing.
The earth is torn, blasted, the background of the War,
The restless, gloomy world.
Our souls shattered, pierced by
Dementing Death, suffocating and
Rotting.
A bomb silences the War, the pursuit
Of the enemy.
Grenades are thrown into the Trench,
Smoke and groans fill the air.
The dead are in a large shell-hole, eternal
Sleep consuming the unlucky.
The Trench, the shell-hole,
Turned into one grave,
One yard of dead men,
A barren wasteland from
The War.
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.
.
.
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Gabrielle Paris
10-31-2012
Period 7 World History
Excerpts from All Quiet on the Western Front