Читать книгу Poems New and Old - John Freeman - Страница 12

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They talked of old campaigns, nineteen-fourteen

And Mons and watery Yser, nineteen-fifteen

And Neuve Chapelle, 'sixteen, 'seventeen, 'eighteen

And after. And they grumbled, leaving home,

Then talked of nineteen-nineteen, nineteen-twenty

And after.

Their thoughts wandered, leaving home

Among familiar places and known years;

Anticipating in the river, of time

Rocks, rapids, shallows, idle glazing pools

Mirroring their dark dreams of heaven and earth.

—And then they parted, one to Chatham, one

To Africa, Constantinople one,

One to Cologne; and all to an unknown year,

Nineteen-nineteen perhaps, or another year.