And Poterloo and I look at each other with a kind of confused
delight. We are glad to see each other, as though we were meeting
after absence! He speaks to me, and though I am quite familiar with
the singsong accent of the North, I discover that he is singing.
We have had bad days and tragic nights in the cold and the rain and
the mud. Now, although it is still winter, the first fine morning
shows and convinces us that it will soon be spring once more.
Already the top of the trench is graced by green young grass, and
amid its new-born quivering some flowers are awakening. It means the
end of contracted and constricted days. Spring is coming from above
and from below. We inhale with joyful hearts; we are uplifted.
Yes, the had days are ending. The war will end, too, que diable! And
no doubt it will end in the beautiful season that is coming, that
already illumines us, whose zephyrs already caress us.
A whistling sound--tiens, a spent bullet! A bullet? Nonsense--it's a
blackbird! Curious how similar the sound was! The blackbirds and the
birds of softer song, the countryside and the pageant of the
seasons, the intimacy of dwelling-rooms, arrayed in light--Oh! the
war will end soon; we shall go back for good to our own; wife,
children, or to her who is at once wife and child, and we smile
towards them in this young glory that already unites us again.
At the forking of the two trenches, in the open and on the edge,
here is something like a doorway.
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