Abstract
—1916 And now I remember the tall hussar who gave me the halo of telegraph wire which I wound round my body at the age of six. Since then my hearing's been strangely acute, for I watched as the workmen erected a line of identical crosses all the way down to the river that kept on discussing itself out through the village, on to somewhere's sea.… He was huge in his dolman and when he saw my delight at the splitting and hewing of wood he called me closer to his brilliant braid then the world dipped and I could see the way that men were cradled in the criss-cross tree, hammering nonsense, till they left one man like a Christ on the wire there, hanging alone but listening to something that no one else heard. My heart beat in dashes back down on the ground and I knew that I'd learn how to understand the metal's despatches. Now, since the war I've crossed high passes to talk in Morse to other transmitters, leading horses piled high with the weight of talking, till I found my way here to the trenches, to the news of troops, disasters and weather, where now I'm stretched out, nerves copper and all my circuits aware they're transmitting a man on a wheel of barbed wire, nothing but message, still tapping out fire.
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