THE AIR SENTRY
by
Patrick Barrington ( 1939 )

I ate my fill of army bread, I drank my pint of army tea
I set my helmet on my head and girt my ground-sheet over me
I laid my gas-mask on my chest, I took my musket in my hand
And full of meat and martial zest went out to guard my native land.

My bayonet was bared to hack the innards out of an attacker
Above my head the night was black, but in my heart the hate was blacker
I was full of martial ire as any news reporter
My soldier’s heart was full of fire and both my boots were full of water.

Like some sea-rover on his deck I paced, and mused on life with loathing
While water trickled down my neck and nestled in my underclothing
The meadows squelched beneath my tread, the streams were rapids and I shot ‘em
The rain came down upon my head, and I came down upon my bottom.

And as in solemn thought I stood and brooded on the Past and Present
And whether purgatory would be more prolonged or more unpleasant
Or dreaming of a heaven as dry and bright as earth was damp and sickly
A sergeant came and asked me why I hadn’t challenged him more quickly.

He scorned my ‘Wherefor’ and ‘Because’ in accents neither kind nor cooing
He asked me who I thought I was and what I thought that I was doing.
I answered that in my belief so far as I could read the mystery
I was a transitory, brief, damp episode in cosmic history.

I said that he and I were blind insensate tools for Fate to batter
Two pale projections of the mind of God upon the screen of Matter.
He answered - (sergeants can be fools, like other military gentry)
That wasn’t in the army rules for challenging a cove on sentry.

I said that he should understand that men who were allied together
Against the foemen of their land should be allied against the weather
I pointed out that in our king’s and country’s service all were brothers
I pointed out a lot of things, he pointed out a lot of others.

He said he’d put me on a charge (he worded it more impolitely)
And I’d no longer be at large to roam the fields and pastures nightly
I said that if the prison cell were dryer - it could not be wetter
Than the green fields I knew so well, there’s nothing that would please me better.

He launched at me those words of shame with which the army loves to plague you
He said he’d got my ****ing name. I said I’d got the ****ing ague.
And while we argued, as the dead will argue after their damnation
An aeroplane flew overhead and dropped a bomb on Euston Station.

The sergeant went. The morning broke. Dark as the song by D.H. Lawrence
The day came, and the world awoke, and still the rain came down in torrents.
But though some weeks have passed away, and many suns and moons have risen
Behind those banks of cloudy grey, I have not yet been put in prison.

And that is why I wander here so wet and wild in my apparel
With water gleaming on my gear and glinting on my rifle barrel
Stray rustics, passing me at night, believing that these fields are haunted
Mistake me for a water-sprite and pass upon their ways undaunted.

I dwell beside untrodden ways by banks the Past and Future meet on
A living door-mat of the days for Time to wipe his weary feet on
Alone beneath the leaden sky from which a leaden stream is falling
I challenge cattle with a cry and tree-stumps like a trumpet calling.

Sometimes I hear a sea-bird snore and hail it with a mournful bellow
Like banshee calling banshee or a satyr crying to his fellow
And when the section-sergeant comes, through pools and puddles softly stepping
My voice is like a roll of drums and percolates from here to Epping.

I wander lonely as a cloud or some forgotten West-end waiter
An anti-gas-cape is my shroud, my death-mask is a respirator
The rain streams from my fingertips, about me life is at a standstill
From hedge and tree the water drips, and thus I guard my native land still.