“Exposure” is a poem that describes the experience of World War One soldiers waiting in the cold. They are slowly freezing to death. They are listening to the distant gunshots of the battle, but are stuck in the cold, doing nothing, left to die slowly. The soldiers are weary, there is only silence of the night and the cold, they are nervous and curious. They are listening to the gusts of wind and agonies of each other, hearing the gunshots in the distance as if from some other war and slowly questioning their presence there.
Dawn slowly comes, the soldiers hear the sudden bullets come with the wind disturbing the silence, but again, nothing happens. Snow begins to slow and the soldiers are slowly succumbing to a dreamlike state, slowly dying and dreaming of their homes. Night will come again and frost will fasten on the mud and the soldiers.
The poem ends with the image of others digging the frozen soldiers out of the frozen ground, recognizing the faces. The final line says “but nothing happens” once again, indicating that the soldiers died in vain, nothing happened but a slow death from the cold.
