Poems on war: Seamus Heaney was inspired by Edward Thomas

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/26/seamus-heaney-edward-thomas-war-poem

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"In a field" by Seamus Heaney

And there I was in the middle of a field, The furrows once called "scores' still with their gloss, The tractor with its hoisted plough just gone

Snarling at an unexpected speed Out on the road. Last of the jobs, The windings had been ploughed, furrows turned

Three ply or four round each of the four sides Of the breathing land, to mark it off And out. Within that boundary now

Step the fleshy earth and follow The long healed footprints of one who arrived From nowhere, unfamiliar and de-mobbed,

In buttoned khaki and buffed army boots, Bruising the turned-up acres of our back field To stumble from the windings' magic ring

And take me by a hand to lead me back Through the same old gate into the yard Where everyone has suddenly appeared,

All standing waiting.

"As the team's head-brass" by Edward Thomas

As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon the handles to say or ask a word, About the weather, next about the war. Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed Once more.

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest I sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole, The ploughman said. 'When will they take it away?' 'When the war's over.' So the talk began – One minute and an interval of ten, A minute more and the same interval. 'Have you been out?' 'No.' 'And don't want to, perhaps?' 'If I could only come back again, I should. I could spare an arm. I shouldn't want to lose A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so, I should want nothing more. . . . Have many gone From here?' 'Yes.' 'Many lost?' 'Yes: a good few.

Only two teams work on the farm this year. One of my mates is dead. The second day In France they killed him. It was back in March, The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.' 'And I should not have sat here. Everything Would have been different. For it would have been Another world.' 'Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good.' Then The lovers came out of the wood again: The horses started and for the last time I watched the clods crumble and topple over After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

• Chosen by Julia Copus and Seamus Heaney

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