Rise up! Out of trenches, muddy holes, bunkers, quarries!
Up out of mud and fire, chalk dust, stench of bodies!
Off with your steel helmets! Throw your rifles away!
Enough of this murderous enmity!
Do you love a woman? So do I.
And have you a mother? A mother bore me.
What about your child? I too love children.
And the houses reek of cursing, praying, weeping.
Were you at ruined Ypres? I was there too.
At stricken Mihiel? I was opposite you.
I was there at Dixmuide, surrounded by floods,
At hellish Verdun, in the smoke and the crowds;
Freezing, demoralised, in the snow,
At the corpse-ridden Somme I was opposite you.
I was facing you everywhere, but you did not know it!
Body is piled on body. Poet kills poet.
I was a soldier. I did my job.
Thirsty, sick, yawning, on the march or on guard,
Surrounded by death and missing home –
And you – were your feelings so unlike mine?
Tear open your tunic! Let’s see your bare skin;
I know that old scar from 1915,
And there on your forehead the stitched-up gash.
But so you won’t think my pain is less,
I open my shirt, here’s my discoloured arm!
Aren’t we proud of our wounds, your wounds and mine?
You did not give better blood or greater force,
And the same churned-up sand drank our vital juice.
Did your brother die in the blast of that shell?
Did your uncle or your classmate fall?
Does not your bearded father lie in his grave?
Hermann and Fritz, my cousins, bled to death.
And my young, fair-haired friend, always helpful and good,
His home is still waiting, and his bed.
His mother has waited since 1916,
Where is his cross and his grave?
Frenchmen,
Whether from Bordeaux, Brest, Garonne;
Ukrainian, Turk, Serb, Austrian;
I appeal to all soldiers of the Great War –
American, Russian, Britisher –
You were brave men. Now throw away national pride.
The green sea is rising. Just take my hand.
Translation by Merryn Williams.
This first appeared in The Interpreter’s House, No. 9, October 1998