War Poetry

Nearly every day, a new poem related to war in some fashion. I try to have a good cross-section of peoples, times, and wars represented.

[warpoetry]

'Reconciliation' by Siegfried Sassoon

When you are standing at your hero’s grave,

Or near some homeless village where he died,

Remember, through your heart’s rekindling pride,

The German soldiers who were loyal and brave.

Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done,

And you have nourished hatred harsh and blind.

But in that Golgotha perhaps you’ll find

The mothers of the men who killed your son.

[warpoetry]

'Reported Dead" by Anna Gordon Keown

My thought shall never be that you are dead:

Who laughed so lately in this quiet place.

The dear and deep-eyed humour of that face

Held something ever living, in Death’s stead.

Scornful I hear the flat things they have said

And all their piteous platitudes of pain.

I laugh! I laugh! – For you will come again –

This heart would never beat if you were dead.

The world’s adrowse in twilight hushfulness,

There’s purple lilac in your little room,

And somewhere out beyond the evening gloom

Small boys are culling summer watercress.

Of these familiar things I have no dread

Being so very sure you are not dead.

[warpoetry]

'The Wound in Time' by Carol Ann Duffy

It is the wound in Time. The century’s tides, 

chanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it. 

Not the war to end all wars; death’s birthing place; 

the earth nursing its ticking metal eggs, hatching 

new carnage. But how could you know, brave 

as belief as you boarded the boats, singing? 

The end of God in the poisonous, shrapneled air. 

Poetry gargling its own blood. We sense it was love 

you gave your world for; the town squares silent, 

awaiting their cenotaphs. What happened next? 

War. And after that? War. And now? War. War. 

History might as well be water, chastising this shore; 

for we learn nothing from your endless sacrifice. 

Your faces drowning in the pages of the sea. 

[warpoetry]

'Everyone Sang' by Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away … O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

-

On this day, at this time, one hundred years ago, the great guns fell silent across the Western Front. Peace reigned over a shattered and exhausted world. Sassoon’s ‘Everyone Sang’ expresses perfectly, in my opinion, the joy with which the survivors must have greeted the news of Armistice.

However, the writing of the Versailles Treaty still awaited, and in that treaty lay the seeds of a new world war, waiting, as Vera Brittain said, for its hour.

[warpoetry]

‘The Dead Soldier’ by Sydney Oswald

Thy dear brown eyes which were as depths where truth    Lay bowered with frolic joy, but yesterday Shone with the fire of thy so guileless youth,    Now ruthless death has dimmed and closed for aye.

Those sweet red lips, that never knew the stain    Of angry words or harsh, or thoughts unclean, Have sung their last gay song. Never again    Shall I the harvest of their laughter glean.

The goodly harvest of they laughing mouth    Is garnered in; and lo! the golden grain Of all thy generous thoughts, which knew no drouth    Of meanness, and thy tender words remain

Stored in my heart; and though I may not see    Thy peerless form nor hear thy voice again, The memory lives of what thou wast to me.    We knew great love....We have not lived in vain.

[warpoetry]

‘Sonnet of a Son’ by Eliot Crawshay-Winters

Because I am young, therefore I must be killed; Because I am strong, so must my strength be maimed; Because I love life (thus it is willed) The joy of life from me a forfeit's claimed. If I were old or weak, if foul disease Had robbed me of all love of living--then Life would be mine to use as I might please; Such the all-wise arbitraments of men! Poor mad mankind! that like some Herod calls For one wide holocaust of youth and strength! Bitter your wakening when the curtain falls Upon your drunken drama, and at length With vision uninflamed you then behold A world of sick and halt and weak and old.

[warpoetry]

‘Lament’ by F.S. Flint

The young men of the world Are condemned to death. They have been called up to die For the crime of their fathers.

The young men of the world, The growing, the ripening fruit, Have been torn from their branches, While the memory of the blossom Is sweet in women's hearts; They have been cast for a cruel purpose Into the mashing-press and furnace.

The young men of the world Look into each other's eyes, And read there the same words: Not yet! Not yet! But soon perhaps, and perhaps certain.

The young men of the world No longer possess the road: The road possesses them. They no longer inherit the earth: The earth inherits them. They are no longer the masters of fire: Fire is their master; They serve him, he destroys them. They no longer rule the waters: The genius of the seas Has invented a new monster, And they fly from its teeth. They no longer breathe freely: The genius of the air Has contrived a new terror That rends them into pieces.

The young men of the world Are encompassed with death He is all about them In a circle of fore and bayonets.

Weep, weep, o women, And old men break your hearts.

[warpoetry]

war-monger [Vietnam Era Poem]

...we'll splatter our verbal napalm on the economic warriors of the wall streets of the world till their bonds are burned and clobbering men on the head with the truth will be the folly of the new special forces JOIN ME PLEASE as i unleash on the world a multi-million megatonic fury: LOVE

[warpoetry]

‘Ode to a Drone’ by Amit Majmudar

Hell-raiser, razor-feathered risers, windhover over Peshawar,

power's joystick-blithe thousand-mile scythe,

proxy executioner's proxy ax pinged by a proxy server,

winged victory, pilot cipher unburdened by aught

but fuel and bombs, fool of God, savage idiot savant

sucking your benumbed trigger-finger gamer's thumb

[warpoetry]

‘A War Song to Englishmen’ by William Blake

Prepare, prepare the iron helm of war, Bring forth the lots, cast in the spacious orb; Th' Angel of Fate turns them with mighty hands, And casts them out upon the darken'd earth! Prepare, prepare!

Prepare your hearts for Death's cold hand! prepare Your souls for flight, your bodies for the earth; Prepare your arms for glorious victory; Prepare your eyes to meet a holy God! Prepare, prepare!

Whose fatal scroll is that? Methinks 'tis mine! Why sinks my heart, why faltereth my tongue? Had I three lives, I'd die in such a cause, And rise, with ghosts, over the well-fought field. Prepare, prepare!

The arrows of Almighty God are drawn! Angels of Death stand in the louring heavens! Thousands of souls must seek the realms of light, And walk together on the clouds of heaven! Prepare, prepare!

Soldiers, prepare! Our cause is Heaven's cause; Soldiers, prepare! Be worthy of our cause: Prepare to meet our fathers in the sky: Prepare, O troops, that are to fall to-day! Prepare, prepare!

Alfred shall smile, and make his harp rejoice; The Norman William, and the learnèd Clerk, And Lion Heart, and black-brow'd Edward, with His loyal queen, shall rise, and welcome us! Prepare, prepare!

[warpoetry]

‘A.E.F.’ by Carl Sandburg

There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart, The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust. A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it. The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty. And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall. Forefingers and thumbs will point casually toward it. It will be spoken among half-forgotten, whished-to-be-forgotten things. They will tell the spider: Go on, you're doing good work.

[warpoetry]

‘Spring Offensive’ by Wilfred Owen

Halted against the shade of a last hill, They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease And, finding comfortable chests and knees Carelessly slept.                               But many there stood still To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge, Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world. Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge, For though the summer oozed into their veins Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains, Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass, Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field— And the far valley behind, where the buttercups Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up, Where even the little brambles would not yield, But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands; They breathe like trees unstirred. Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word At which each body and its soul begird And tighten them for battle. No alarms Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste— Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done. O larger shone that smile against the sun,— Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together Over an open stretch of herb and heather Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned With fury against them; and soft sudden cups Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge, Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge, Some say God caught them even before they fell. But what say such as from existence’ brink Ventured but drave too swift to sink. The few who rushed in the body to enter hell, And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames With superhuman inhumanities, Long-famous glories, immemorial shames— And crawling slowly back, have by degrees Regained cool peaceful air in wonder— Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

This is the last poem Wilfred Owen wrote before his death in November of 1918 while crossing the Sambre-Oise Canal.

[warpoetry]

‘Two Fusiliers’ by Robert Graves

And have we done with War at last? Well, we've been lucky devils both, And there's no need of pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.

By wire and wood and stake we're bound, By Fricourt and by Festubert, By whipping rain, by the sun's glare, By all the misery and loud sound, By a Spring day, By Picard clay.

Show me the two so closely bound As we, by the wet bond of blood, By friendship blossoming from mud, By Death: we faced him, and we found Beauty in Death, In dead men, breath.

[warpoetry]

‘Spring in War-Time’ by Sara Teasdale

I feel the spring far off, far off,    The faint, far scent of bud and leaf— Oh, how can spring take heart to come    To a world in grief,    Deep grief?

The sun turns north, the days grow long,    Later the evening star grows bright— How can the daylight linger on    For men to fight,    Still fight?

The grass is waking in the ground,    Soon it will rise and blow in waves— How can it have the heart to sway    Over the graves,    New graves?

Under the boughs where lovers walked    The apple-blooms will shed their breath— But what of all the lovers now    Parted by Death,    Grey Death?

[warpoetry]

‘In Memoriam (Francis Ledwidge)’ by Seamus Heaney

Killed in France 31 July 1917

The bronze soldier hitches a bronze cape That crumples stiffly in imagined wind No matter how the real winds buff and sweep His sudden hunkering run, forever craned

Over Flanders. Helmet and haversack, The gun’s firm slope from butt to bayonet, The loyal, fallen names on the embossed plaque — It all meant little to the worried pet

I was in nineteen forty-six or seven, Gripping my Aunt Mary by the hand Along the Portstewart prom, then round the crescent To thread the Castle Walk out to the strand.

The pilot from Coleraine sailed to the coal-boat. Courting couples rose out of the scooped dunes. A farmer stripped to his studs and shiny waistcoat Rolled the trousers down on his timid shins.

At night when coloured bulbs strung out the sea-front Country voices rose from a cliff-top shelter With news of a great litter – “We’ll pet the runt!” – And barbed wire that had torn a friesian’s elder.

Francis Ledwidge, you courted at the seaside Beyond Drogheda one Sunday afternoon. Literary, sweet-talking, countrified, You pedalled out the leafy road from Slane.

Where you belonged, among the dolorous And lovely: the May altar of wild flowers, Easter water sprinkled in outhouses, Mass-rocks and hill-top raths and raftered byres.

I think of you in your Tommy’s uniform, A haunted Catholic face, pallid and brave, Ghosting the trenches with a bloom of hawthorn Or silence cored from a Boyne passage-grave.

It’s summer, nineteen-fifteen. I see the girl My aunt was then, herding on the long acre. Behind a low bush in the Dardanelles You suck stones to make your dry mouth water.

It’s nineteen-seventeen. She still herds cows, But a big strafe puts the candles out in Ypres: ‘My soul is by the Boyne, cutting new meadows… My country wears her confirmation dress.’

‘To be called a British soldier while my country Has no place among nations…’ You were rent By shrapnel six weeks later. ‘I am sorry That party politics should divide our tents.’

In you, our dead enigma, all the strains Criss-cross in useless equilibrium And as the wind tunes through this vigilant bronze I hear again the sure confusing drum

You followed from Boyne water to the Balkans But miss the twilit note your flute should sound. You were not keyed or pitched like these true-blue ones Though all of you consort now underground.

[warpoetry]

‘For a War Memorial’ by G.K. Chesterton

(SUGGESTED INSCRIPTION PROBABLY NOT SUGGESTED BY THE COMMITTEE)

The hucksters haggle in the mart The cars and carts go by; Senates and schools go droning on; For dead things cannot die.

A storm stooped on the place of tombs With bolts to blast and rive; But these be names of many men The lightning found alive.

If usurers rule and rights decay And visions view once more Great Carthage like a golden shell Gape hollow on the shore,

Still to the last of crumbling time Upon this stone be read How many men of England died To prove they were not dead.

[warpoetry]

‘Epitaph on My Days in Hospital’ by Vera Mary Brittain

I found in you a holy place apart, Sublime endurance, God in man revealed, Where mending broken bodies slowly healed My broken heart