Whispers

There was that time, two women were in a field.
One was taken, the other left.

That moment in midday heat, when your hoe hooked
a grenade, froze a clan of faces mid-air.

In the woods, the white soap-bars you skirted:
the trip-wire beneath them, fine as your eye.

The bayonet through the haystack, that threaded
your mother's earring, clipped your ear;

the copper saucepan punctured, head-height;
your aunt's leg clean off as you sat together –

the brass shells stowed in the ditch you ducked
into as the earth erupted all around.

Forty years on, as he whispered you away
from your station by father's bed,

it was the young doctor finally ran you through
when he would not meet your eyes.