In honor of Memorial Day: Favorite war poems

[Junkie Brewster]

We took our two dogs to the park this morning, and on our way back, we heard "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" (the Pogues version, not the original), a very good, very sad song about World War I. It made me think of how many good poems have come from veterans, and I thought I would post one of my favorites. I hope you'll do the same.

Back

They ask me where I've been,
And what I've done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn't I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands...
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.

- Wilfred Gibson

[Junkie Brewster]

1. Here's another one I thought about often in the run up to the current Gulf war

Dulce et Decorum Est

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 I 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

[cwydro]

10. Wilfred Owen

wrote many good ones.

And Siegfried Sassoon as well:

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death,
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say - "I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap"
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die - in bed.

[Old Troop]

2. Don't have a poem. My pediatrician was a WWI veteran who had sucked

in a little gas. He was a battalion surgeon during the war who thought that all wars were bullshit.

[Brickbat]

6. Mr. Brickbat's great-grandfather did his WWI service by testing gas masks with real gas.

He didn't get much of a parade.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

3. Here's one I wrote many years ago

TAPS

The weight of time is on my mind
as I step to your grave
to say farewell to fallen friends;
I kneel before the stone
of you, who paid the price supreme
so others may still live.
The roar of guns was what you heard
the moment that you fell--
A flash of light erased your sight,
a bullet stole your life.
So many years ago it was--
Too many; not enough--
The weight I bear keeps pressing down
upon my broken back.
The emptiness won't go away,
and neither will the tears.
I mourn for you-- for ALL of you!
But that is not enough.
When all is said, and all is done,
a question still remains:
When arms are laid aside (again),
and treaties have been signed,
what have we learned, my weary friend?
What have we REALLY learned?

© 2010 Steven A. Hessler
All Rights Reserved

[gratuitous]

4. e.e. cummings

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelov'd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me:more blond than you.

[Brickbat]

5. That's the first one I thought of.

[Brickbat]

7. Not a poem, a short story. "On the Rainy River" by Tim O'Brien. Devastating.

It's in "The Things They Carried" and is excellent.

[Silver Swan]

8. These

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.


In Flanders Fields by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

[murielm99]

9. Thank you for the Randall Jarrell.

That's the one I would have posted.