Lawrence
Hall, HSG
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
A Carrier of Bodies
My stretcher is one scarlet stain
-Robert W. Service, “The Stretcher Bearer”
In illo tempore:
I don’t know
that anyone shouted, “Corpsman up!”
Like in the movies;
I was already up
There, where smoking
metal scraps stopped in some kid’s flesh
Red fragments of flesh screaming in the sun
Later:
Carrying
bodies of literature was impossible
But I tried;
Wordsworth and Keats during the day
Holes in the patient
and in sterile drapes
Red fragments
of flesh in the E. R. at night
Now:
In the
evenings I carry Wordsworth outside
And my older
self, to a chair at dusk
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