The 100th anniversary of the end of WWI just passed. The President of the United States dishonored himself by skipping the ceremonies because it was raining. Here are poems/expressions of unbearable pain and bravery that Trump could never understand. Could never understand even their existence.
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AFTERMATH: March 1919
by Siegfried Sassoon
Have you forgotten yet? . . .
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same – and War’s a bloody game . . .
Have you forgotten yet? . . .
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz –
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench –
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, “Is it all going to happen again?”
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack –
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
as you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads – those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet? . . .
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.
Siegfried Sassoon was decorated for bravery in a battle on the Western Front. He “became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war in his “Soldier’s Declaration” of 1917, culminating in his admission to a military psychiatric hospital…” (Wikipedia)
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Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Wilfred Owen was decorated for bravery after voluntarily returning to the War. He was killed on the Western Front a week before the end of the War. He also wrote Anthem for Doomed Youth, Futility, and other powerful poems.
The title Dulce et Decorum Est is taken from the Roman poet Horace and means “it is sweet and honorable…”, followed by pro patria mori, which means “to die for one’s country.” The link below is to someone giving a reading of Dulce et Decorum Est.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qts3K3KznN4
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