The Road to Bayonvillers

The sidecar skimmed low down like a flying sled

over the straight road with its double screen

of wire--the blue profile of Amiens sank

below the plain--near by, a hidden blast

of gunfire by the roadside--just ahead,

a white cloud bursting out of a slope of green.

Then low swift open land and the wasted flank

of a leprous hillside--over the ridge and past

the blackened stumps of Bois Vert, bleak and dead.

Our sidecar jolted and rocked, twisting between

craters, lunging at every rack and wrench.

Through Bayonvillers--her dusty wreckage stank

of rotten flesh, a dead street overcast

with a half-sweet, fetid, cloying fog of stench.