#war poetry

[chibidraws]

[daysleftofsecondterm]

I heard we were sharing poems

My personal favorite is “Boots” by Rudyard Kipling

It dates back to 1903 when British soldiers marched endlessly in South Africa during the Second Boer War.

There’s a very famous reading of it from 1915 by Taylor Holmes that was used in the trailer for 28 Years Later.

We're ALWAYS sharing poems here my friend.

Thank you for this one on 1,071 days left.

[thenextdoormatilda]

What should a poet do in such a world? Write poems. Zbigniew Herbert, as a Warsaw adolescent, saw the only choice clearly enough when he said: "One might still offer / even to the betrayed world / a rose."To write poetry, even in the most hopeless of situations, is an act of faith-not only in poetry itself, but in the world. And who knows? Maybe someone will even read you someday, awaken to his or her own life, and live it with little more laughter and sanity, more dignity and passion.

From "War as Parable and War as Fact: Herbert and Firche"

[petermorwood]

Naming of Parts by Henry Reed (1942)

To Alan Mitchell Vixi duellis nuper idoneus Et militavi non sine gloria Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday, We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning, We shall have what to do after firing. But today, Today we have naming of parts. Japonica Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens, And today we have naming of parts. This is the lower sling swivel. And this Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see, When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel, Which in your case you have not got. The branches Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures, Which in our case we have not got. This is the safety-catch, which is always released With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see Any of them using their finger. And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers: They call it easing the Spring. They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt, And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance, Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards, For today we have naming of parts.

I can still remember when, many years ago, this poem turned up in 4th Form English Literature and completely mystified a class of 15-year-old boys because:

Almost none of us had ever seen a military rifle, never mind taken one apart, and the notion that doing so could be even slightly poetic had never crossed our 15-year-old male minds.

Gardens, flowers, bees, poetry and military rifles don't usually turn up this close together in the average 15-year-old male mind.

There's deliberate juxtaposition of contradictory imagery, the contrast of mind-numbing boredom with unfettered imagination, being stuck in a classroom when you want to be somewhere else, and all the other things you're supposed to consider when analysing a poem that may - or may not, you won't know until it's too late - play a role in end-of-term exams.

However hearing it aloud was rather different.

School had a pretty good tape library (radio programmes of plays, speeches etc.) and by an extraordinary fluke this, read in part by poet Henry Reed himself, is the actual recording played to my class.

That was when we realised there are hints and implications in this poem which may indeed turn up in quite a few 15-year-old male minds. They're just not usually discussed in 4th Form English Class.

At least they weren't discussed in mine... :-D

(Like most poems with a distinctive metre, this lends itself to parody. Here's one about cooking...)

[lostgirl88]

SAS Rogue Heroes - Paddy x Eoin

Is it the hour? We leave this resting-place Made fair by one another for a while. Now, for a god-speed, one last mad embrace; The long road then, unlit by your faint smile. Ah! the long road! and you so far away! Oh, I'll remember! but . . . each crawling day Will pale a little your scarlet lips, each mile Dull the dear pain of your remembered face. . . . Do you think there's a far border town, somewhere, The desert's edge, last of the lands we know, Some gaunt eventual limit of our light, In which I'll find you waiting; and we'll go Together, hand in hand again, out there, Into the waste we know not, into the night

The Wayfarers by Rupert Brooke

[charnel-grounds]

Norman Lindsay (1879–1969), The Coming of War. 1915

illustration from Leon Gellert’s ‘Songs of a Campaign’, 1917

source

[victusinveritas]

British infantry advancing through a gas attack at Loos, September 25, 1915. Loos was the first time that the British used gas in an attack. It didn't help. They lost almost 60,000 men and ultimately failed to take German positions. A Strange Meeting (alternate version). Earth's wheels run oiled with blood. Forget we that. Let us lie down and dig ourselves in thought. Beauty is yours and you have mastery, Wisdom is mine and I have mystery. We two will stay behind and keep our troth. Let us forego men's minds that are brute's natures, Be we not swift with swiftness of the tigress. Let us break ranks from those who trek from progress. Miss we the march of this retreating world Into old citadels that are not walled. Let us lie out and hold the open truth. Then when their blood hath clogged the chariot wheels We will go up and wash them from deep wells. What though we sink from men as pitchers falling Many shall raise us up to be their filling Even from wells we sunk too deep for war And filled by brows that bled where no wounds were. -Wilfred Owen.

Rifleman Frank Edwards leading the charge at Loos while kicking a football. (A London Irish at Loos (Elizabeth Thompson)). Wounded in the thigh and gassed (because that's what happens when you lead a charge through gas without a mask), Frank Edwards led his men to capture a German trench. He was shot in the thigh, and that combined with his gas injuries led to him being evacuated to England and invalided out. He later reenlisted in the military police and died in 1964.

[closingours]

We kill at every step - not only in wars, riots and executions. We kill when [we] drive gifted young people into occupations for which they are not suited. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame.

Hermann Hesse, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in If the War Goes On..., 126.