Recruitment Office 1914

The camera interrogates a crowd, lines
of faces that are bright, proud. Wide smiles announcing
the certainty of the times. Unapologetic
hats caught in mid-air, boaters, bowlers and
flat cloth-caps hang, jocular exclamations
before the yet-to-be. We see
men in rows on a threshold of dreams,
fleeing work, wives , a tedium of nows
flung aside for the game, the chance, a
glimpse of some luminous eternity
other than their own.
Lads jostling at the door, portal
for their newly-minted selves, trade
browns and greys for green, what is,
for what’s unseen.
Soon, the earth’s clamour
for bruised skin begins, the dive and mash
of jugular rend awakening.
Most, finding home, at last
in the field’s crowded chalk.
From joy to dust is not so far,
a hundred autumns past.