Passing over

Passing over

Poem describing the hardship of wartime service, stressing the emotional strain of operations and the longing for rest.

1944

One typewritten sheet

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MAllenJH179996-160512-09

PASSING OVER

Silver fish above the clouds,
Rising, falling in the sun,
Floating through the endless sky
In an aura of silent thunder.

They change, and change again,
Arranging up and down, and back and forth,
A shoal of fish against the stream,
Interbalancing in rise and fall.

Three miles below a microscopic breed,
As in a falling spell, now sense and omnipresent throb.
Stronger now – Crescendo! Louder yet!
Oh roar Roar Roar The CLAMOUR!

Dying, dying, gone away,
Linger on the greying day
The rumble of unnumberable guns.

………………………………………………………………..

But those above can hear no sound.
The gently ears have long shut out
The never-ending crash, the savage rave,
That like great trumpets on the Day of Judgment,
Shakes the immaculate plain of Heaven.

Among these palpable and thinking men,
Encased within their fiery cans,
The obliterating rant has overgrown infinity
And now becomes a silence,

Only to return again
In halfway hours of hungry sleep.
And then the throbbing blast that now
They cannot hear will roar again,
Reincarnated in the sleepless dreams
Of airmen lying in their tin-hut beds,
Wearied, worn, and praying for cessation.

Colin Joseph Lundley
1944