What Passing Bells

“What passing-bells, for those who die as cattle?” he murmurs to himself.

“What's that? Are you making poetry again, Wilfred?”

“Trying, as always. I don't know how you aren't, sitting here, nothing but the sun in the sky to keep us company here in this dirt and grime. This whole world screams poetry to me.”

August shakes his head, the steel bowl he wears as a helmet shifts back and forth. Right and left. It often does when Wilfred speaks around him, but more so lately. “Never read much poetry. Can't see how it has much to do with what we see 'round here. More like Revelations to me.”

“Maybe. Maybe. . .” Wilfred looks up, opens his eyes. He always keeps his eyes closed when he's composing. It helps channel the scene, the essence, the feeling of what's going on around him. He can see better with his eyes closed, where as August can't see at all. Or so it seems.

The sky is clear, though, and the sun still shines down on them. In another place, it would be a beautiful day. In other places, it is a beautiful day. But not in this corner of the world. Never here. In Shropshire, surely though, a beautiful day. The grass of the lawn drifting in a soft breeze, the sheep pulling at it with their teeth, chewing, shuffling about. The dogs watching closely by. Wilfred always feels comforted by the chewing of the sheep. The methodical way they seem to approach eating. No enjoyment there, but a task to be done. Like a war.

In the heat of midday tiny rivulets of sweat run through the crust of salt and sand that has built up on every uncovered patch of Wilfred's skin. Miniscule rivers and tributaries flowing along his face, watering the fields of grime and potential disease which always ride along on his skin, which have always ridden along with the armies. Since the time of Caesar. Since the time of the Assyrians. Since man formed armies to fight one another, and even before. The diseases, the viruses, the pestilences, have always ridden with men. Especially with the soldiers.

“Only the monstrous anger of the guns.” The guns. Always the guns. The artillery, the canons, always seeming far away, booming, booming. Sometimes whistling and landing close by, always coming from one side or the other. Often, August tells Wilfred that he'd be happier if one of the shells landed on them, struck them down and left them dismembered in the dirt like so many of the other men who've come here. Wilfred, though, just wants to live long enough to go home. He knows this too, shall pass. In his heart he knows. The passing-bells, the roar of the guns. Similar enough.

Wilfred knows too that when he gets home he'll be published. That poetry will be the great gift of this terrible war. He knows this in the same way that he feels the world around him better with his eyes shut. With fewer distractions, on a quiet day like today, he sees the world after. A peaceful world which will never see war again, after the poets and the artists show everyone what war is, and what a world can be with out it. That day will come, but not today.

“Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle.” A refrain for the dead. So many of them. But so few rifles rattling lately. In the heat of summer, no one seems to have the energy to start any skirmishes, to advance, to peak over the edge. Even the snipers are quiet. Lord willing, the generals will feel the same way about the heat and Wilfred will sit in this quiet hole long enough to finish a few more lines.

“Can patter out their hasty orisons.” But no, there are no funeral prayers for these fallen men. He opens his eyes again and looks over at August, dozing in the dirt, seemingly dead himself at first glance, just as so many of the corpses look like they're sleeping. He's laid out on his back now with his prized steel bowl doing time as a pillow. Just the two of them at this kink in the trenches, this lonely piece of open tunnel. Unlikely companions, kept together by the sheer will August. Wilfred would try to separate himself from him, but he feels a certain pity. Both of them come from Shropshire, and there is a kinship of a sort, but only tangential. One from a family with an ancestral home there and flocks of sheep to raise, the other from a poor family living in a tenement in town. One a poet and a dreamer, the other gruff and glued to the ugly ground.

Maybe it's the lack of wit that Wilfred pities, the simpleness, the shallowness. But how shallow? August seems to feel and think enough to have roped himself to another man, a stranger, so unlike himself. Why? Why Wilfred? Maybe there is more that goes on behind that ugly face that one might think. Maybe. Or maybe it is a fear and longing for something constant in the horrible world that they've found themselves for the past year. This hellish place that most days, as August says, reminds them of the Book of Revelations. No wonder the poor man longs for the end of days.

“No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells.” Today the world consists of earthen walls on either side and a bright sun and a sky with no clouds. Sweat streaked skin and chafing. Rough woolen clothes full of lice. The smell of corpses wafting over the top of the trench and the rot of flesh covered in flies and fermenting in the heat. Enough poetry for one day. No reason not to nap as August does. There will be little sleep tonight when the booming artillery wakes up.