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He held it like a precious gift,
this cup of crude gray tin.
Black toes regard him earnestly
from well torn army boots,
long past their sordid history.
Something inside his head,
as dusk fell into trenches of
malodorous despair,
a little switch had snapped at last,
turned off all hearing, sight and,
shockingly, all traces of a fear
that had immobilised his devilled soul.
There was, amidst the whistle
and the thumping of grenades,
a primal scream of sheer necessity,
of need sprung from the loins of desperation.
And, like a prize, a trinquet of pure gold
he soldiered on, with silly laughter as his guide.
The bucket had been tied by fraying hemp,
the last remaining shreds of calloused skin
rubbed off and fell, like ugly flakes of snow
without an echo to the water far below.
He cried then, at the sound of empty tin,
it was as if the gods were mocking one,
the man who had not seen a dropp of anything
but human blood, spilled by his trembling hands
and those of comrades with grim jaws
and stubbles of sharp hairs and tired eyes.
It could not be, he shouted to the smoke-filled sky,
but in the bucket there was life, he now could see.
A happy looking frog, dressed all in green
had hitched this ride, in hopes of water and he sat,
a handsome fellow and clearly without fear.
They made a pact there at the well, a silent pledge
as only strays were buzzing by the fallen men.
And when the sun rose in the morn, a crimson ball
they reached the shores of mighty Balaton near Vlee.
Herbert Nehrlich
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