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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=409034" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Returning of Issue</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tomorrow will be your last day here. Someone is speaking:<br>A familiar voice, speaking again at all of us.<br>And beyond the windows— it is inside now, and autumn—<br>On a wind growing daily harsher, small things to the earth <br>Are turning and whirling, small. Tomorrow will be<br>Your last day here,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But not we hope for always. You cannot see through the windows<br>If they are leaves or flowers. We hope that many of you<br>Will be coming back for good. Silence, and stupefaction.<br>The coarsening wind and the things whirling upon it<br>Scour that rough stamping-ground where we so long<br>Have spent our substance,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As the trees are spending theirs. How much of mine have I spent,<br>Father, oh father? How sorry we are to lose you<br>I do not have to say, since the sergeant-major<br>Has said it, the RSM has said it, and the colonel<br>Has sent over a message to say that he also says it.<br>Everyone sorry to lose us,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And you, oh father, father, once sorry too. I think<br>I can honestly say you are one and all of you now:<br>Soldiers. Silence, and disbelief. A fact that will stand you<br>In pretty good stead in the various jobs you go back to.<br>I wish you the best of luck. Silence. And all of you know<br>You can think of us here, as home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As home: a home we shall any of you welcome you back to.<br>Most of you have, I know, some sort of work waiting for you,<br>And the rest of you now being, thanks to us, fit and able,<br>Will be bound to find something. I begin to be in want.<br>Would any citizen of this country send me<br>Into his fields? And</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Before I finalise: one thing about tomorrow<br>I must make perfectly clear. Tomorrow is clear already:<br>I saw myself once, but now am by time forbidden<br>To see myself so: as the man who went evil ways,<br>Till lie determined, in time of famine, to seek<br>His father's home.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Autumn is later down there: it should now be the time<br>Of vivacious triumph in the fruitful fields.<br>As he approached, he ran over his speeches of sorrow,<br>Not less of truth for being much-rehearsed:<br>The last distilment from a long and inward.<br>Discourse of heartbreak. And</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The first thing you do, after first thing tomorrow morning,<br>Is, those that leave not been previously detailed to do so,<br>Which I think is the case in most cases, is a systematic<br>Returning of issue. It is all-important<br>You should restore to store one of every store issued.<br>And in the case of two, two.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And I, as always late, shall never know that lifted fear<br>When the small hard-working master of those fields<br>Looked up. I trembled. But his heart came out to me<br>With a shout of compassion. And all my speech was only:<br>'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and am no more worthy<br>To be called thy son.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But if I cried it, father, you could not hear me now,<br>Where now you lie, crumpled in that small grave<br>Like any withering dog. Your fields are sold and built on,<br>Your lanes are filled with husks the swine reject.<br>I scoop them in my hands. I have earned no more; and more<br>I shall not inherit. And</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A careful check will be made of every such object<br>That was issued to each personnel originally,<br>And checked at issue. And let me be quite implicit:<br>That no accoutrements, impedimentas, fittings, or military garments<br>May be taken as souvenirs. The one exception is shirts,<br>And whatever you wear underneath.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">These may be kept, those that wish. But the rest of the issue<br>Must be returned, except who intend to rejoin<br>In regular service. Silence. Which involves a simple procedure<br>I will explain in a simple group to those that rejoin.<br>Now, how many will that be? Silence. No one? No one at all?<br>I see. Very well. I have up to now</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Spoken with the utmost of mildness. I speak so still,<br>But it does seem to me a bit of a bloody pity,<br>A bit un-bloody-feeling, after the all<br>We have bloody done for you, you should sit on your dumb bloody arses, <br>Just waiting like bloody milksops till I bloody dismiss you.<br>Silence, embarrassed, but silent.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And am I to break it, father, to break this silence?<br>Is there no bloody man among you? Not one bloody single one?<br>I will break the silence, father. Yes, sergeant, I will stay<br>In a group of one. Father, be proud of me.<br>Oh splendid, man! And for Christ's sake, tell them all,<br>Why you are doing this.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Why am I doing this? And is it too late to say no?<br>Come speak out, man: tell us, and shame these bastards.<br>I hope to shame no one, sergeant, in simply wishing<br>To remain a personnel. I have been such a thing before.<br>It was good, and simple; and it was the best I could do.<br>Here is a man, men! Silence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Silence, indeed. How could I tell them, now?<br>I have nowhere else to go? How could I say<br>I have no longer gift or want; or how describe<br>The inexplicable tears that filled my eyes<br>When the poor sergeant said: 'After the all<br>We have bloody done for you'?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Goodbye forever, father, after the all you have done for me.<br>Soon I must start to forget you; but how to forget<br>That reconcilement, never enacted between us,<br>Which should have been ours, under the autumn sun?<br>I can see it and feel it now, clearer than daylight, clearer<br>For one brief moment, now,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Than even the astonished faces of my fellows,<br>The sergeant's uneasy smile, the trees, the relief at choosing<br>To learn once more the things I shall one day teach:<br>A rhetoric instead of words; instead of a love, the use<br>Of accoutrements, impedimenta, and fittings, and military garments,<br>And harlots, and riotous living.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Reed">Henry Reed</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=409034" data-title="Returning of Issue de Henry Reed" data-description="Tomorrow will be your last day here. Someone is speaking:
A familiar voice, speaking again at all of us.
And beyond the windows— it is inside now, and autumn—
On a wind growing daily harsher, small things to the earth 
Are turning and whirling..."></div>
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