Carol Ann Duffy was asked to create a poem to mark the final passing of the last World War One Survivor Harry Allingham and here she movingly rewinds the mindless slaughter and reveals the expansiveness of futures which were sacrificed over hellish yards of mud. The 'width 'of the words deployed  in Duffy's new poem yields up  for the readers of today, the vistas lost, the horizons destroyed.  The terse use of the clipped 't' sound in the poem conveys the inhuman,  mechanisation of carrying out one's 'duty', through  obeying orders ,  leading to the near obliteration of a generation.

Once again, Duffy as in her Laureate poem 'Premonitions' explores the conotations of time reversed. 'What if' time retreated, if we could recuperate 'time'  and all that was taken away could regroup and grow again? Grief does make time travellers of us all, and the profound and tragic irony of Duffy's poem here is that the poem can go backwards and healing can take place, when all the orders inflicted upon the soldiers sent them forwards, relentlessly 'over the top' to their deaths. Lost potential is named through Duffy's careful delineation of missed stages,  and the pathos of 'shaking mud from their hair' is visceral. A perfect, tender glimpse of a profound - 'what if.' Those bloggers on the Telegraph with certain mealy -mouthed comments about the poem , seem to miss the poem's power  somehow. Perhaps in their eagerness to be clever, they lost their capacity to feel.

The final pathos too of the poet having no need to testify to the horrors of  war, to the events of the past and even the present is palpable. Wilfred Owen's most famous poem frames this recreation of lost lives and his voice haunts all the poem.  Finally it is as if  Owen himself escapes his final amnesty day sacrifice and can smile too, glad to be alive, to survive and thrive.

'If poetry could truly tell it backwards

Then it would. '

Miraculous!

And possibly the overriding dynamic of Duffy's most powerful work?