A Sudden Quiet

THE QUIET

I could not understand the sudden quiet—
The sudden darkness— in the crash of fight,
The din and glare of day quenched in a twinkling
In utter starless night.

I lay an age and idly gazed at nothing,
Half-puzzled that I could not lift my head;
And then I knew somehow that I was lying
Among the other dead.

(poem by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1917)

• To the frontpage of The Heritage of the Great War.