Glimpses of Eternity

[Time: 1937

 Place:  Spain, at the front, where Orwell was fighting the forces of Franco]

                    (1)  

When an aeroplane swoops down
and uses its machine-gun,

the sound,   from below,

is like a fluttering of wings.

                (2)  

As the yellow dawn  comes up behind us,

the Andalusian sentry,  muffled in his cloak,

begins singing.

Across no man’s land,

a hundred or two hundred yards away,,

you can hear the Fascist sentry   also singing.

-- George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (1938; publ. 1943)