11/11

As I listen to the memorials - the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, we shall remember them, they died protecting our country, etc. the 108-year-old who as a teenager was forced to take part in a bloodbath in Belgium - I wonder why it is we focus on these teenage victims' sacrifices, rather than on the evil, ignorant misguided morons, the politicians, who sent, and continue to send, millions of young men and women to their certain agonising and premature deaths, rather than use what wit they have to engage in diplomatic discussion with their 'enemies'.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen, killed, aged 25, one week before the Armistice, 4th November, 1918.

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 disappointed shells 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 floundering 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.

The title and the Latin exhortation of the final two lines are drawn from a poem of Horace (Odes iii 2.13):

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:

mors et fugacem persequitur virum

nec parcit inbellis iuventae

poplitibus timidove tergo."

"How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country:

Death pursues the man who flees,

spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs

Of battle-shy youths."

Wikipedia