“for we have years and days and hours left to kill / and the means to make them pay”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, a day late because I spent much of the day asleep on the couch:


Falling Asleep, Siegfried Sassoon

Voices moving about in the quiet house:
Thud of feet and a muffled shutting of doors:
Everyone yawning. Only the clocks are alert.

Out in the night there’s autumn-smelling gloom
Crowded with whispering trees; across the park
A hollow cry of hounds like lonely bells:
And I know that the clouds are moving across the moon;
The low, red, rising moon. Now herons call
And wrangle by their pool; and hooting owls
Sail from the wood above pale stooks of oats.

Waiting for sleep, I drift from thoughts like these;
And where to-day was dream-like, build my dreams.
Music ... there was a bright white room below,
And someone singing a song about a soldier,
One hour, two hours ago: and soon the song
Will be ‘last night’: but now the beauty swings
Across my brain, ghost of remembered chords
Which still can make such radiance in my dream
That I can watch the marching of my soldiers,
And count their faces; faces; sunlit faces.

Falling asleep ... the herons, and the hounds....
September in the darkness; and the world
I’ve known; all fading past me into peace.


---L.

Subject quote from Draw the Curtain, Cats Laughing.

Comments

[sunlit_stone]

Oh, this is lovely. And somehow perfectly autumnal. Thanks for sharing!

[larryhammer]

Innit? I like this a lot.

[shewhomust]

That's terrific! Funny how we (oh, all right then, I) know one or two of his poems so very well, and this one not at all.

[larryhammer]

He wrote a lot that wasn't The War or After War, but not much of it is well known. To be fair, though, a lot of it isn't as powerful as the war poetry -- this is one of the best.

[cmcmck]

Such a great one!

[larryhammer]

Yes.

[thawrecka]

That's beautiful!

[larryhammer]

Innit? Beautiful and charming.