Behind the Screens

Dennis Butts has an essay, Seeking an Oasis in the Spring edition of Slightly Foxed. He references a poem by a nurse from among the Oasis collection of World War II poetry:

Behind the Screens
by Joy Westren

Meticulously
I dress your wound
knowing you cannot live . . .
In ten swift rivers
from my finger-tips
Compassion runs
into your pale body
that is so hurt
it is no more
than the keeper
of your being.
Behind these screens,
soldier,
we two are steeped
in a peace deeper
than life gives,
you with closed eyes
and I moving quietly
as though you could wake,
all my sense aware
that your other self
is here,
waiting to begin
life without end.