Tim Kendall writes in his War Poets blog
Borden did produce a handful of poems. Several of these were eventually published as part of The Forbidden Zone, although they have been dropped from the most recent edition. If her best prose is reminiscent of poetry, it is fitting that her poetry should return the compliment. ‘At the Somme‘ finds the gap between Whitman and prose, as demonstrated in the opening lines of its second section, ‘The Song of the Mud’:
This is the song of the mud.
The pale yellow glistening mud that covers the naked hills like satin,
The grey gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel over the valleys,
The frothing, squirting, spurting liquid mud that gurgles along the road-beds,
The thick elastic mud that is kneaded and pounded and squeezed under the hoofs of horses.
The invincible, inexhaustible mud of the War Zone.
This is the song of the mud, the uniform of the poilu.
His coat is of mud, his poor great flapping coat that is too big for him and too heavy,
His coat that once was blue, and now is grey and stiff with the mud that cakes it.
This is the mud that clothes him –
His trousers and boots are of mud –
And his skin is of mud –
And there is mud in his beard.