The Death Bed-Siegfried Sassoon
I first heard this poem at the end of a TV show where a hero died. It was recited by the main characters and their father by the light of a fire place. Maybe it’s for that reason that I always invision this scene by fire light.
He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore
Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.
Someone was holding water to his mouth.
He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
Water—calm, sliding green above the weir;
Water—a sky-lit alley for his boat,
Bird-voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
And shaken hues of summer: drifting down,
He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.
Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
Blowing the curtain to a gummering curve.
Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.
Rain—he could hear it rustling through the dark;
Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace,
Gently and slowly washing life away.
He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
Leaped like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
But someone was beside him; soon he lay
Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
And death, who'd stepped toward him, paused and stared.
Being a nurse with palliative care experience, I find the first five stanzas to be a gripping and accurate portrayal of end of life. But it is the last two that really get me. The sudden direction that makes us not only spectators of the scene but players in it. I can read it over and over musing about the contrasts between the strugle for life and the inevitability of death; the young and the old; safety and gunfire in the distance. So many possible stories come to mind of who this yound soldier might be, what conflict he might be in, and who was left behind.