DULCE ET DECORUM EST; 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 towards 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 the 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
8 October 1917 – March, 1918

PEACE;  Rupert Brooke

Now, God be thanked Who has matched us1 with His hour, 
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, 
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, 
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, 
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, 
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, 
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, 
And all the little emptiness of love!2

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release3 there,
Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save4 this body, lost but breath; 
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there 
But only agony, and that has ending; 
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death

AT THE CENOTAPH; Siegfried Sassoon

I saw the Prince of Darkness, with his Staff,
Standing bare-headed by the Cenotaph:
Unostentatious and respectful, there
He stood, and offered up the following prayer.
‘Make them forget, O Lord, what this Memorial
Means; their discredited ideas revive;
Breed new belief that War is purgatorial
Proof of the pride and power of being alive;
Men’s biologic urge to readjust
The Map of Europe, Lord of Hosts, increase;
Lift up their hearts in large destructive lust;
And crown their heads with blind vindictive Peace.’
The Prince of Darkness to the Cenotaph
Bowed. As he walked away I heard him laugh.

I have a Rendezvous with Death;  Alan Seeger

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ’twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear…
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

World War Two

HIGH FLIGHT; John G. Magee 

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,-and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of-wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air….

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark nor ever eagle flew-
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God

 They Shall Not Grow Old; Laurence Binyon

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Nicolai Mayorov 

It’s not for us to calmly rot in graves.
We’ll lie stretched out in our half-open coffins
And hear before the dawn the cannon coughing,
The regimental bugle calling gruffly
From highways which we trod, our land to save.

We know by heart all rules and regulations.
What’s death to us? A thing that we despise.
Lined up in graves, our dead detachment lies
Awaiting orders. And let generations
To come, when talking of the dead, be wise;
Dead men have ears and eyes for truth and lies.

Bertold Brecht; Der Kriegsgott

I saw the old god of war stand in a bog between chasm and rockface.
He smelled of free beer and carbolic and showed his testicles to adolescents, for he had been rejuvenated by several professors.
In a hoarse wolfish voice he declared his love for everything young.

.To The RAF; Alfred Noyes

Never since English ships went out
To singe the beard of Spain,
Or English sea-dogs hunted death
Along the Spanish Main,
Never since Drake and Raleigh won
Our freedom of the seas,
Have sons of Britain dared and done
More valiantly than these.

Whether at midnight or at noon,
Through mist or open sky,
Eagles of freedom, all our hearts
Are up with you on high;
While Britain’s mighty ghosts look down
From realms beyond the sun
And whisper, as their record pales,
Their breathless, deep, Well Done

VIETNAM

FALKLANDS

Juan Lopez and John Ward; Jorge Luis Borges

It was their luck to be born into a strange time.
The planet had been parceled out among various countries, each

one provided with loyalties, cherished memories, with a past
undoubtedly heroic, with rights, with wrongs, with a particular
mythology, with bronze forefathers, with anniversaries, with
demagogues and symbols.

This arbitrary division was favorable for wars.

Lopez was born in the city beside the tawny river; Ward, on the

outskirts of the city where Father Brown walked. He had
studied Spanish in order to read Quijote.

The other one professed a love for Conrad, who had been revealed

to him in a classroom on Viamonte Street.

They might have been friends, but they saw each other face to

face only once, on some overly famous islands, and each one of

them was Cain, and each was Abel.

They were buried together. Snow and corruption know them.
The incident I mention occurred in a time that we cannot understand.

9/11

The Depth of America; William Broome

Hearing patriotic words,
seeing our flag become ours, again,
returning to kindness as normal,
signs of a changing America.
True healing grips the nation,
cutting ties with greed and indulgence,
scourge of the twentieth century,
a return to word-as-bond values.
Putrid politics drowning
in a cauldron of immorality,
exchanged for new leadership,
responsible, capable, determined.
A surge of confidence,
imbued with the red, the white, the blue,
of a country’s courage and purpose,
to defend freedom and its keepers.
Our covenant: defeat disparate enemies
bent on taking from us
that which cannot be conveyed,
only earned, honored, and safeguarded.

AFGHANSITAN & IRAQ

War on Terror; Fred D’Aguiar

Lasts for as long as nightmares
paint behind the eyelids

as long as a piece of string
cut from a navel remains buried under a tamarind tree

as long as radar from a whale
sounds like my child crying in her sleep

not long after the eyes wash away
last nights paint

no longer than a piece of string
tied at a navel

shorter than this war in this time under
this government that drowns our children in their sleep

In Halabja and Tikrit; Robert Brussack

There must be mothers in Halabja and Tikrit
Who close their eyes to still their souls,
And pray to hear,
Above the soft rustle of the hijab,
A young whisper on a breeze,
And allow themselves to wonder
What Allah has to do with IEDs.

INVASION;Lewis Sanford Smoler

Let the “trip-trap” of snares beat sullenly
‘gainst the dry drum skins
In time to tramp of human hooves
In time to the gun’s crackling death.
In time to the midnight shrieking children.
Float them over seas’ bloody swell
March them over earth pocked with shell
Then–
With your great broom sweep this face clean of life
Gutting the world with you knife.