Out - 1
The Dream Time
My father sat in his chair recovering From the four-year mastication by gunfire and mud Body buffeted wordless, estranged by long soaking In the colours of mutilation His outer perforations Were valiantly healed, but he and the hearth-fire, its blood-flicker On biscuit-bowl and piano and table leg Moved into strong and stronger possession Of minute after minute, as the clock's tiny cog Laboured and on the thread of his listening Dragged him bodily from under The mortised four-year strata of dead Englishmеn He belonged with. Hе felt his limbs clearing With every slight, gingerish movement. While I, small and four Lay on the carpet as his luckless double His memory's buried, immovable anchor Among jawbones and blown-off boots, tree-stumps, shellcases and craters Under rain that goes on drumming its rods and thickening Its kingdom, which the sun has abandoned, and where nobody Can ever again move from shelter
Out - 1 - meaning Summary
War's Hold on Home
The poem presents a child watching his father recover from the First World War, while sensing that the man remains psychologically trapped among the dead. Although his wounds have healed and ordinary domestic life continues around him, time and small movements seem to pull him only slowly back from the battlefield. The child imagines himself as a helpless double, tethered to his father's buried memories of violence and loss.
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