From The Ghost Path

Film of the First War’s Shell-Shocked

These are the war artists
their Chaplin walks
their dancing scalps
their uncontrollable trembling.

No grim poem, painting or story
more eloquent than their ballet.
Terror and pity threw the switch
opened the shutter.

In the middle of the dead
skulls and worse
they became baby bodies
torsos fair-skinned and hairless.

Young men from northern Europe, limbs gibbering.
Tongue never told what their shakes speak.
Oh me shivering china
be still be still be still.

John Gibbens

Previous | Back to Collected Poems | Next