The Refugees
By Sir Herbert Read
Mute figures with bowed heads
They travel along the road:
Old women, incredibly old
and a hand-cart of chattels.
They do not weep:
their eyes are too raw for tears.
Past them have hastened
processions of retreating gunteams
baggage-wagons and swift horsemen.
Now they struggle along
with the rearguard of a broken army.
We shall hold the enemy towards nightfall
and they will move
mutely into the dark behind us,
only the creaking cart
disturbing their sorrowful serenity.
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