The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
Typical of the understated tone of the poem, Rosenberg uses unglamorous everyday speech — the poppy is stuck rather than placed or fitted behind his ear. It is an unconscious symbolic act, predicting the poet’s impending death.
Break of Day in the Trenches