Now if you saw my village
You'd not think it beautiful,
But flat and commonplace—
As I'd have called it half a year ago

But when you've pondered
Hour upon chilly hour in those damned trenches
You get at the significance of things,
Get to know, clearer than before,
What a tree means, what a pool,
Or a black, wet field in sunlight.

One gets to know,
In that shell-pierced silence
Under the unmoved, ironic stars,
How good love of the earth is.

So I go strolling,
Hands deep in pockets, head aslant,
And eyes screwed up against the light,
Just loving things
Like any other lunatic or lover.

For there's so much to love,
So much to see and understand,
So much naïveté, whimsicality,
Even in a dull village like this.

Pigeons and fowls about a pointed haystack;
The red-tiled barns we sleep in;
The profile of the distant town
Misty against the leaden-silver sky;
Two ragged willows and a fallen elm
With an end of broken wall
Glimmering through evening mist—
All worthy Rembrandt's hand,
Rembrandt who loved homely things…

Then there's the rain pool where we wash,
Skimming the film-ice with our tingling hands;
The elm-fringed dykes and solemn placid fields
Flat as a slate and blacker.
There's the church—
The poorest ever built I think—
With all its painted plaster saints
Straight from the rue St. Sulpice,
Its dreadful painted windows,
And Renaissance "St. Jacques le Majeur"
Over the porch…

To-day the larks are up,
The willow boughs are red with sap,
The last ice melting on the dykes;
One side there stands a row of poplars,
Slender amazons, martial and tall,
And on the other
The sunlight makes the red-tiled roofs deep orange…

We have the fairy tales by heart,
No longer tremble at a bishop’s hat,
And the thunder’s first note;
We have these little things off pat,
Avoid church as a rat;
We scorn the juggernaut,
And the great wheels’ rut;
Half of the old gang’s shot,
Thank God, but the enemy stays put.

We know our Mother Goose and Eden,
No longer fear the walker in the garden,
And the fibs for children;
The old spells are undone.
But still ghosts madden,
A cupboard skeleton
Raises the hairs of lad and maiden.

If dead men walked they, too, would holler 
At sight of death, the last two fisted killer
Stained a blood colour;
A panic’s pallor
Would turn the dead yellow.

We have by heart the children’s stories,
Have blown sky high the nursery of fairies;
Still a world of furies
Burns in many mirrors.

Death and evil are twin spectres.
What shall destruction count if these are fixtures?
Why blot the pictures
Of elves and satyrs
If these two gnomes remain unmoved by strictures?

We have the stories backwards,
Torn out magic from the hearts of cowards
By nape and gizzards;
There are two laggards,
Death and evil, too slow in heeding words.

Tear by the roots these twin growths in your gut;
Shall we learn fairy tales off pat,
Not benefit from that?
Burn out the lasting rot,
Fear death as little as the thunder’s shot,
The holy hat.