Wilfred Wilson Gibson

The Raining

THE night I left my father said:
“You’ll go and do some stupid thing.
You’ve no more sense in that fat head
Than silly Billy Witterling.

“Not sense to come in when it rains –
Not sense enough for that, you’ve got.
You’ll get a bullet through your brains,
Before you know, as like as not.”

And now I’m lying in the trench
And shells and bullets through the night
Are raining in a steady drench,
I’m thinking the old man was right.