Camp Wolverine, Kuwait

Staff Sergeant Garza, the mortuary affairs specialist

from Missouri, switches on the music to hear

there's a long black cloud hanging in the sky, honey,

as she slices out a Y-incision with a scalpel

from collarbone to breastplate, from the xiphoid

process

down the smooth skin of the belly, bringing light

into the great cavern of the body, in the deep flesh

where she cuts the cords which bind the heart,

lifting it in her gloved palms, weighing

and measuring the organ, she can't help

but imagine how fast it beat when he first kissed

Shawna Allen, or how it became heavy

with whisky and what humbled him.

What Garza holds in her hands,

Thirty-four years of a life, will be given

in ash to the earth and the sea

if we're lucky, by someone like her,

singing low at the chorus

there's a long black cloud hanging in the sky,

weather's gonna break and hell's gonna fly,

baby, sweet thing, darling.

There is little that can make us as acutely conscious of the fact that we are still alive as being shown the body of someone who is dead. Brian Turner - who served in Iraq - presents us with a soldier's autopsy as it takes place. His poem offers us the perspective of a man who fought in a war that the majority of us have only experienced from our armchairs. We are also reminded that, once dead, we've left the building/war zone/bombsite.

Those of us left behind are more easily able to remain dispassionate if we do not attach memories - real or imagined - to the articles of the dead, our sentimentality chaining us to what must necessarily be released; our sympathies wrung out by the idea of what might have been, and what was lost. Here, it is up to us whether we mourn the dead soldier for all the wars he represents, or feel sympathy for his shattered family, or imagine his heart beating faster for a kiss with Shawna Allen as Garza does, even as she calmly measures its size and notes its weight, his humanity and individuality given consideration.

Shawna Allen might not actually be the name of the dead soldier's kissing partner, but the use of her name is a device to attach the “mortuary affairs specialist” to the life that the soldier led and the people he knew: she knew them too, which establishes the poignancy of her job and the professionalism of her attitude.

The body becomes an open cavern into which light pours as various internal organs are examined; when the heart, the defunct motor that ran the machine of the body, is severed from the cords that once bound it to the blood supply it finalises any usefulness of the man, it is an admission of his transformation from human being to inanimate organic object. When Garza holds “thirty-four years of a life” - which is now over - in the palm of her hand, it seems an incongruous remnant of a life force crammed with experiences and potential.

The song mentioned in the poem reminds us that life goes on for the rest of us, and there is music in it: in the words of the chorus the “long black cloud” is akin to the portent of doom, and when the storm breaks “hell's gonna fly”, as one might imagine it did when the soldier was killed. But when Garza sings “baby, sweet thing, darling” she might be singing endearments directly to the dead man.

Turner remarks that if they're lucky (“they” being the soldiers who are killed) their ashes will be scattered by someone like Staff Sergeant Garza “singing low at the chorus”; there is perceived affection in that combination of woman and song. It is a relationship of sorts. No soldier wants to die, but all soldiers must know that they might, and when they do, it is a form of sacrifice. And, even though the soldiers are beyond caring, respect for what is left of them is a courtesy in the minds of those who remain. We are all so full of potential while still breathing that we shouldn't wait to make the most of it.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk