大象传媒

Night Guard at the Front
The night is long, and darker than a dark I had ever known before.
Fear rises in me and grows with every trifling sound.
This dark hole in which I stand, I fear
Will be my grave before the gray coming of the dawn.

The tall stack of hay behind me, I鈥檓 afraid,
Might be the torch that sears my flesh,
And when the flames die down,
Will leave nothing but my dusty ash.

Fear, greater than all the fears my young life has known,
Takes hold of every single fibre and sinew
Of this supple and virile body of mine.
It grows and grows and I鈥檓 afraid will consume me
As I stand all alone in this forbidding dark.

The hours creep slowly by, one by one,
And as daylight finally comes
I find I 鈥榤 only a shell, still pulsing, though empty,
Empty of what it takes to be a man,
The brave soldier I had always expected to be.

Stanley Scislowski

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