Sanctuary Wood
To reach the wood
you pass through a worn pornography
of war, a room of splayed shrapnel,
horse tibiae slipped white from the earth,
leather peep-holed cases
to crank through sepia corpses.
The wood’s acre,
still scooped from shells,
grassless from tourists feet
and leaf burst branches,
is a relief, and in wet trenches
fixed in their 11 11 11 weave
you can pity rotting feet
and the necessity of rum.
But for Sanctuary Wood
pornography and pathos alone are too sane.
So next door, ‘The Museum’,
a tidy 1960s house, gnomes at the porch,
and behind dormer windows in dustless rooms
a masked mannequin child
watches a mannequin Tommy bleed in a bed,
cheery Poilus stab and garrotte Boches
in sunny pastel prints
and the way to the bedrooms is pointed
by serrated bayonets
screwed to floral wallpaper.