Chemin des Dames

British guns had a flat trajectory;

German howitzers ranged freely.

Trying to cross 800 meters

of open ground, Brits died;

descending from their heights, trying

to cross ditto, Germans ditto.

For a while, amid bullets and shells,

cows grazed, seemed even

to get used to it; then, lying

in the open, swelled

to three times normal size.

Men dug with bare hands and helmets

till spades came. Before censorship

arrived, Brits wrote,

“I don’t see how we can outflank them”;

but none foresaw friends floating up

when it rained, or being used

as a bench while eating.

Except perhaps an early

shell-shock case, who in a sense

made it home, and only said

thereafter, “No one will leave here.”

About the author

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure (Story Line Press, 1986) and Happiness (Story Line Press, 1998), and two collections, A Poverty of Words (Prolific Press, 2015) and Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, 2018). In print, Pollack’s work has appeared in Hudson Review, Southern Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Manhattan Review, Skidrow Penthouse, Main Street Rag, Miramar, Chicago Quarterly, The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Poetry Quarterly Review, Magma (UK), Neon (UK), Orbis (UK), and elsewhere. Online, his poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Diagram, BlazeVox, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, and elsewhere.