Stevie Smith - Come On, Come Back lyrics

(incident in a future war) Left by the ebbing tide of battle On the field of Austerlitz The girl soldier Vaudevue sits Her fingers tap the ground, she is alone At midnight in the moonlight she is sitting alone on a round flat stone. Graded by the Memel Conference first Of all human exterminators M L 5 Has left her just alive Only her memory is dead for evermore. She fears and cries, Ah me, why am I here? Sitting alone on a round flat stone on a hummock there. Rising, staggering, over the ground she goes Over the seeming miles of rutted meadow To the margin of a lake The sand beneath her feet Is cold and damp and firm to the waves' beat. Quickly - as a child, an idiot, as one without memory - She strips her uniform off, strips, stands and lunges Into the icy waters of the adorable lake. On the surface of the water lies A ribbon of white moonlight The waters on either side of the moony track Are black as her mind, Her mind is as secret from her As the water on which she swims, As secret as profound as ominous. Weeping bitterly for her ominous mind, her plight, Up the river of white moonlight she swims Until a treacherous undercurrent Seizing her in an icy amorous embrace Dives with her, swiftly severing The waters which close above her head. An enemy sentinel Finding the abandoned clothes Waits for the swimmer's return ('Come on, come back') Waiting, whiling away the hour Whittling a shepherd's pipe from the hollow reeds. In the chill light of dawn Ring out the pipe's wild notes 'Come on, come back.' Vaudevue In the swift and subtle current's close embrace Sleeps on, stirs not, hears not the familiar tune Favourite of all the troops of all the armies Favourite of Vaudevue For she had sung it too Marching to Austerlitz, 'Come on, come back'.