Wilfred Owen

Conscious

His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed.
His eyes come open with a pull of will,
Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.
A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill ...
How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug!
And who’s that talking, somewhere out of sight?
Why are they laughing? What’s inside that jug?
“Nurse! Doctor!” “Yes; all right, all right.”

But sudden dusk bewilders all the air —
There seems no time to want a drink of water.
Nurse looks so far away. And everywhere
Music and roses burnt through crimson slaughter.
Cold; cold; he’s cold; and yet so hot:
And there’s no light to see the voices by —
No time to dream, and ask — he knows not what.