A SOLDIER REMEMBERS

No sickly scent of Tuscany today,

The corncobs orange on the blanco’d wall,

Nor contadino by the dusty way

Urging gaunt oxen with barbaric call,

Still less the bunkered spandau burst by burst

Barking the twisted tendrils of the vines,

The purring shell which silent puffs at first,

Then jars the hot and leafy Appenines.

Yet in our afternoon we see them still

Framed in some shattered casement of our thought,

Hear these old sounds and smell that sad, sweet smell.

There are the olives misty on the hill,

There sleeps the peasant when the sun is hot

And there the dust drifts from that blatant shell

Sydney Scroggie