The darkness crumbles away
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies,
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver -what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.
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A rat in the trenches has caught this poets eye and he realises that this animal is equally at home in both German and British trenches. Rosenberg imagining that the Rat finds the war 'amusing'. Poppies are growing in the blood-stained churned ground being trodden down and flattened by soldiers, Rosenberg however feels certain that the one he has placed behind his ear is quite safe.
The first half of the poem has a touch of humour as he watches the rat, thinks about his poppy then his mood changes as he begins to think about the war. The growing poppies seem to symbolise the fallen men and these flowers will also fall as the shells explode.
'Druid Time' refers to the sunrise when the ancient Druid ceremonies took place.
The Poppy still holds its importance each Year on Remembrance Day – see In Flanders Field by John McCrae.
Von
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