I like it and suspect that Harry Patch would have liked it too.

LAST POST

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin

that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud...

but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood

run upwards from the slime into its wounds;

see lines and lines of British boys rewind

back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home -

mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers

not entering the story now to die and die and die.

Dulce - No - Decorum - No - Pro patria mori.

You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)

like all your mates do too -

Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert -

and light a cigarette.

There's coffee in the square,

warm French bread

and all those thousands dead

are shaking dried mud from their hair

and queueing up for home. Freshly alive,

a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released

from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,

your several million lives still possible

and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.

You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly write it backwards,

then it would.

 ah, bug ger, that did it for me - I'm blubbing now.  I can't hear the Last Post without crying.

 Geordie - one of the most powerful experiences of my years of education was my introduction to the 'war poets'.  I think Duffy's 'Last Post' could take a worthy place among them.

Over thirty years later I can still close my eyes and hear "Big Bill" Williams rich deep voice intoning Owen and Sassoon - I'd give anything to hear him recite 'Last Post'.