Today I Start My Twenty-Second Year

(In December 1936, English poet John Cornford was killed in combat near Lopera, during the Spanish Civil War. It was the day after his twenty-first birthday. Could this be the poem he was formulating in his last hours?) They switched from cubes to cylinders, those knights of Calatrava, when cannon chipped the corners off. We’re still playing at that palaver. I’m lying in a scratch-mark (saying “trench” insults true trenches), about to take Lopera, mired in medieval stenches. Sunlight’s livening turrets on the ochre-amber castle, and we’re about to murder its “Fascist-lackey vassals”. We glided through the olives like viruses, infesting: since no-one gave us shovels, we scraped fox-holes with our mess tins. Amusing, isn’t it, pondering exactly what a fight is? Do I help humanity by contracting enteritis? The whole thing seems to hover between contrary poles: by killing (or by dying) do we achieve our goals? I’d hoped to fire some shots, then go, but war’s prolonged, extensive. I can’t defend aggression, though passivity’s offensive. Lopera – is it Cordoba, or is it part of Jaen? We’re lads with rusty rifles, but do we count as men? And am I now a soldier, or a Marxist doctrinaire? Five turrets glow down on me, three round, while two are square.