Time & Again

COVID wards 2020-2021

For the sake of the present / let’s just admit that thigh-deep mud & poison gas & running into machine gun fire / still belong to us all the glass-eyed / survivors who said sundown was almost worse than morning slaughters / night when stretcher-bearers could finally reach the duckboards / run toward the day’s groans caught / on barbed wire / surgeons waited in casualty clearing with their indelible ink two / possibilities / attempt & no hope by midnight under the flare of kerosene they would’ve plowed through how many limbs entrails & skulls at least a hundred per surgeon per night / months / years / in no way do I compare this to a pandemic but maybe / nature of human memory the definition / of nature how many don’t believe the lies & destinations / you never return from / who gets the ventilator what becomes of those making decisions it’s almost / the opposite of a siege inside the hospital walls / the gasping / is it shock / we had to tie down people’s hands to stop them pulling out the breathing tubes air had / a taste what happens / on a front so far away / I think those in charge call it wastage