10 SEPTEMBER 1943, Page 11

DISCHARGED AIR GUNNER

HE is morose now, handcuffed to our lands,

gloomy against the wingtip lights, the mainplane's glisten : observes the lost, and shrugs and understands, talks dubiously sometimes, though only when green boys listen.

He is clamped in irons of happening ; feels seldom the sunshine, the temperate window's gleam, but sombre in his own cloud his eye reveals the glint of knowledge venomous to your dream.

He once plunged down in smoke, merged with the foam around a desperate headland : his crumpled plane made the sea wink and take her wreck to doom.

He did not hope to tread this land again, and sometimes by the water we see him stand mourning the tide's play with his deep-drowned hand.

HERBERT CORBY.