Return to Tales from a draughty old fen

THE NET

by

Enoch Powell

From Poems of the Second World War, Ed. Victor Selwyn, the Salamander oasis Trust, 1985

The net like a white vault, hung overhead
Dewy and glistening in the full moon's light,
Which cast a shadow-pattern of the thread
Over our face and arms, laid still and white
Like polished ivories on the dark bed.
The truck's low side concealed from us the sight
Of tents and bivouacs and truck-torn sand
That lay without; only a distant sound
Of gunfire or, sometimes more close at hand,
A bomb, with dull concussion of the ground,
Pressed in upon our world, where, all else banned,
our lonely souls eddied like echoing sound
Under the white cathedral of the net,
And like a skylark in captivity
Hung fluttering in the meshes of our fate,
With death at hand and, round, eternity.

Return to Tales from a draughty old fen