CHARLES Hamilton Sorley was killed at Loos in 1915 when barely 20, leaving behind not just great potential but a corpus of fine work, including the nihilistic sonnet, When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead.
Today's sliver of a poem has a sense of foreboding. It's included in the timely new anthology From the Line: Scottish War Poetry 1914-1945 (edited by David Goldie and Roderick Watson, £12.50, ASLS).
LOST
Across my past imaginings
Has dropped a blindness silent and slow.
My eye is bent on another things
Than those it once did see and know.
I may not think on those dear lands
(O far away and long ago!)
Where the old battered signpost stands
And silently the four roads go.
East, west, south and north,
And the cold winter winds do blow.
And what the evening will bring forth
Is not for me nor you to know.
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