To the Front

To the Front

Thomas Allen

To the front I must go,
In the realm of death, I must live;
To the outer rim of time’s most lethal battle, I must cling;
In Flanders, I must fight and die.
To the front I go,
To be lacerated and punctured,
To bleed and die,
To hear shells roaring up into the sky,
And the agonizing crying of the dying.
I become one of the countless human moles;
I become one of the living dead with corpse-white face.
In the fields of Flanders, I am bathed with slime and mud,
With the stench of dead and dying.
Here pass I my last days in a crazy-quilt of thunder and blood,
Waiting with indifference for death of deliverance.
And when in the mud I lie dying,
My comrades, good and true,
Pass me by, saying,
“I can’t give you a hand,
You’re for the Promise Land.”
After the rats have glutted themselves with my flesh and blood,
And my remains are absorbed in the blood and mud of Flanders,
Another nameless being shall take my place,
As before him did I take another’s,
But that’s all that ever changes.
In the fields of Flanders shall I push up poppies forevermore.


From the Glory of War by Thomas Coley Allen (Franklinton, NC: TC Allen Co., 2006)
Copyright © 2006 by Thomas Coley Allen