SEQUEL MozaRT on the wireless when down below the millionaire
lay dying. That's the air raid. That and the sweat and speed of the first night, white masks and faces in the bright-lit theatre, and the tired faces, masks slipped down, in the passages at dawn,
waiting for the many fl ore cases from the wards.
The tired faces. Relatives coming in. The tired faces. That's the air raid.
The girl with a charming smile and no left leg,
but not dead either ; and the girl just shocked ; and the girl whose man had gone and left no word. Nobody slept. The nurses couldn't sleep, so much to do and then the tidying up,
the putting in perfect order for another day,
the summing of disaster into beds and sheets and a lot more laundry on Thursday. The girl whose face was soft as petals and pitted with scars of steel made by some German. The relatives again. The Jewish mother who thought he'd be all right.
We thought he wouldn't. We were sorry. But that's the air raid.
The negro in the wards when the hospital wireless insisted on Mozart._ " This C sharp drives me crazy. It's driving me crazy." But he was laughing. The waiter was all right. The millionaire wasn't.
Purposeless, incalculable. And the girl we all loved, she was the one that died.
II
Seeing you dead, all the formalities done, washed, brushed,- and dressed as a child to meet your maker, finished with fears, beyond the hands of foe, without flags or frivolities, no great fight won ; we can remember all the undone things, mountains unclimbed and hearts kept closed and eyes now beyond seeing, music unheard and ears
now beyond hearing ; love imperfectly told.
Life stays unfinished when death is quite complete. Seeing you dead, we start to wonder what could be worse than such an endless peace.
DAVID WINSIER.
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