Which Side Am I Supposed to Be On?

Though aware of our rank and alert to obey orders, 
Watching with binoculars the movement of the grass for an ambush,
The pistol cocked, the code-word committed to memory; 
                           The youngest drummer
Knows all the peace-time stories like the oldest soldier, 
                           Though frontier-conscious.

About the tall white gods who landed from their open boat, 
Skilled in the working of copper, appointing our feast-days, 
Before the islands were submerged, when the weather was calm, 
                           The maned lion common,
An open wishing-well in every garden;
                           When love came easy.

Perfectly certain, all of us, but not from the records, 
Not from the unshaven agent who returned to the camp; 
The pillar dug from the desert recorded only 
                           The sack of a city,
The agent clutching his side collapsed at our feet, 
                           "Sorry! They got me!"

Yes, they were living here once but do not now, 
Yes, they are living still but do not here;
Lying awake after Lights Out a recruit may speak up: 
                           "Who told you all this?"
The tent-talk pauses a little till a veteran answers 
                           "Go to sleep, Sonny!"

Turning over he closes his eyes, and then in a moment 
Sees the sun at midnight bright over cornfield and pasture, 
Our hope. . . . Someone jostles him, fumbling for boots, 
                           Time to change guard:
Boy, the quarrel was before your time, the aggressor 
                           No one you know.

Your childish moments of awareness were all of our world, 
At five you sprang, already a tiger in the garden, 
At night your mother taught you to pray for our Daddy 
                           Far away fighting,
One morning you fell off a horse and your brother mocked you: 
                           "Just like a girl!"

You've got their names to live up to and questions won't help, 
You've a very full programme, first aid, gunnery, tactics, 
The technique to master of raids and hand-to-hand fighting; 
                           Are you in training?
Are you taking care of yourself? are you sure of passing 
                           The endurance test?

Now we're due to parade on the square in front of the Cathedral, 
When the bishop has blessed us, to file in after the choirboys, 
To stand with the wine-dark conquerors in the roped-off pews, 
                           Shout ourselves hoarse:
"They ran like hares; we have broken them up like firewood; 
                           They fought against God."

While in a great rift in the limestone miles away
At the same hour they gather, tethering their horses beside them; 
A scarecrow prophet from a boulder foresees our judgment, 
                           Their oppressors howling;
And the bitter psalm is caught by the gale from the rocks: 
                           "How long shall they flourish?"

What have we all been doing to have made from Fear 
That laconic war-bitten captain addressing them now? 
"Heart and head shall be keener, mood the more 
                           As our might lessens":
To have caused their shout "We will fight till we lie down beside 
                           The Lord we have loved."

There's Wrath who has learnt every trick of guerrilla warfare, 
The shamming dead, the night-raid, the feinted retreat; 
Envy their brilliant pamphleteer, to lying 
                           As husband true,
Expert impersonator and linguist, proud of his power 
                           To hoodwink sentries.

Gluttony living alone, austerer than us, 
Big simple Greed, Acedia famed with them all
For her stamina, keeping the outposts, and somewhere Lust 
                           With his sapper's skill,
Muttering to his fuses in a tunnel "Could I meet here with Love, 
                           I would hug her to death."

There are faces there for which for a very long time
We've been on the look-out, though often at home we imagined, 
Catching sight of a back or hearing a voice through a doorway. 
                           We had found them at last;
Put our arms round their necks and looked in their eyes and discovered
                           We were unlucky.

And some of them, surely, we seem to have seen before: 
Why, that girl who rode off on her bicycle one fine summer evening
And never returned, she's there; and the banker we'd noticed 
                           Worried for weeks;
Till he failed to arrive one morning and his room was empty, 
                           Gone with a suitcase.

They speak of things done on the frontier we were never told, 
The hidden path to their squat Pictish tower
They will never reveal though kept without sleep, for their code is
                           "Death to the squealer":
They are brave, yes, though our newspapers mention their bravery
                           In inverted commas.

But careful; back to our lines; it is unsafe there, 
Passports are issued no longer; that area is closed;
There's no fire in the waiting-room now at the climbers' Junction, 
                           And all this year
Work has been stopped on the power-house; the wind whistles under
                           The half-built culverts.

Do you think that because you have heard that on Christmas Eve 
In a quiet sector they walked about on the skyline,
Exchanged cigarettes, both learning the words for "I love you" 
                           In either language:
You can stroll across for a smoke and a chat any evening? 
                           Try it and see.

That rifle-sight you're designing; is it ready yet? 
You're holding us up; the office is getting impatient; 
The square munition works out on the old allotments 
                           Needs stricter watching;
If you see any loiterers there you may shoot without warning, 
                           We must stop that leakage.

All leave is cancelled tonight; we must say good-bye. 
We entrain at once for the North; we shall see in the morning 
The headlands we're doomed to attack; snow down to the tide-line:
                           Though the bunting signals
"Indoors before it's too late; cut peat for your fires," 
                           We shall lie out there.