Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.
For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.
Wilfred Owen, 1918
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Jeffers
Antrim
No spot of earth where men have so fiercely
for ages of time
Fought and survived and cancelled each other,
Pict and Gael and Dane, McQuillan, Clandonnel,
O'Neill,
Savages, the Scot, the Norman, the English,
Here in the narrow passage and the pitiless
north, perpetual
Betrayals, relentless resultless fighting.
A random fury of dirks in the dark:
a struggle for survival
Of hungry blind cells of life in the womb.
But now the womb has grown old, her strength
has gone forth; a few red carts in a fog
creak flax to the dubs,
And sheep in the high heather cry hungrily that
life is hard; a plaintive peace; shepherds
and peasants.
We have felt the blades meet in the flesh in a
hundred ambushes
And the groaning blood bubble in the throat;
In a hundred battles the heavy axes bite the
deep bone,
The mountain suddenly stagger and be darkened.
Generation on generation we have seen the
blood of boys
And heard the moaning of women massacred,
The passionate flesh and nerves have flamed
like pitch-pine and fallen
And lain in the earth softly dissolving.
I have lain and been humbled in all these graves,
and mixed new flesh with the old and filled
the hollow of my mouth
With maggots and rotten dust and ages of repose.
I lie here and plot the agony of resurrection.
Robinson Jeffers, 1931
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Sassoon
The Rear Guard
Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the
unwholesome air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.
"God blast your neck!"
(For days he'd had no sleep.)
"Get up and guide me through this
stinking place."
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.
Alone, he staggered on until he found
Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.
Siegfried Sassoon, 1918
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Jarrell
Losses
It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes—and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else
had died
For us to figure we had died like.)
In our new planes, with our new crews,
we bombed
The ranges by the desert or the shore,
Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores—
And turned into replacements and woke up
One morning, over England, operational.
It wasn't different: but if we died
It was not an accident but a mistake
(But an easy one for anyone to make).
We read our mail and counted up our missions—
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school—
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties
were low."
They said, "Here are the maps"; we burned
the cities.
It was not dying—no, not ever dying;
But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,
And the cities said to me: "Why are you dying"
We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?"
Randall Jarrell, 1944
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Whitman
Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of
carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night
incessantly softly wash again, and ever again,
this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself
is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still
in the coffin—
I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips
the white face in the coffin.
Walt Whitman, 1865
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Sandburg
Buttons
I have been watching the war map slammed up
for advertising in front of the newspaper
office.
Buttons, red and yellow buttons, blue and black buttons, are shoved back and forth across the map.
A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west.
(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us?
Carl Sandburg, 1915
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Anonymous
The Three Ravens
There were three ravens sat on a tree,
They were as black as they might be.
The one of them said to his mate,
"Where shall we our breakfast take?"
"Down in yonder green field
There lies a knight slain under his shield;
"His hounds they lie down at his feet,
So well they can their master keep;
"His hawks they fly so eagerly,
There's no fowl dare come him nigh."
Down there comes a fallow doe
As great with young as she might go.
She lifted up his bloody head
And kissed his wounds that were so red.
She got him up upon her back
And carried him to earthen lake.
She buried him before the prime;
She was dead herself ere even-song time.
God send every gentleman
Such hawks, such hounds, and such a leman.
Anonymous, 1611
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Housman
Here dead lie we because we did
not choose
Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which
we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
A. E. Housman, 1936
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> McCrae
In Flanders Fields
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.
John McCrae, 1915
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Sandburg
Grass
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers
ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Carl Sandburg, 1918
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Arnold
Dover Beach
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round
earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Matthew Arnold, 1867
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Kipling
Recessional
God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—Lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies;
The Captains and the Kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boasting as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!
Rudyard Kipling, 1897
What Were They Like?
1) Did the people of Viet Nam use lanterns
of stone?
2) Did they hold ceremonies to reverence the
opening of buds?
3) Were they inclined to quiet laughter?
4) Did they use bone and ivory, jade and silver,
for ornament?
5) Had they an epic poem?
6) Did they distinguish between speech and
singing?
1) Sir, their light hearts turned to stone.
It is not remembered whether in gardens
stone lanterns illumined pleasant ways.
2) Perhaps they gathered once to delight in
blossom, but after the children were killed
there were no more buds.
3) Sir, laughter is bitter to the burned mouth.
4) A dream ago, perhaps. Ornament is for joy.
All the bones were charred.
5) It is not remembered. Remember, most
were peasants; their life was in rice and
bamboo. When peaceful clouds were
reflected in the paddies and the water buffalo
stepped surely along terraces, maybe fathers
told their sons old tales. When bombs
smashed those mirrors there was time
only to scream.
6) There is an echo yet of their speech which was
like a song. It was reported their singing
resembled the flight of moths in moonlight.
Who can say? It is silent now.
Denise Levertov, 1966
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Sexton
I'm dreaming the My Lai soldier
again
I'm dreaming the My Lai soldier again,
I'm dreaming the My Lai soldier
night after night.
He rings the doorbell like the Fuller Brush Man
and wants to shake hands with me
and I do because it would be rude to say no
and I look at my hand and it is green
with intestines.
And they won't come off,
they won't. He apologizes for this
over and over.
The My Lai soldier lifts me up again and again
and lowers me down with the other dead
women and babies
saying, It's my job. It's my job.
Then he gives me a bullet to swallow
like a sleeping tablet.
I am lying in this belly of dead babies
each one belching up the yellow gasses of death
and their mothers tumble, eyeballs,
knees, upon me,
each for the last time, each authentically dead.
The soldier stands on a stepladder above us
pointing his red penis right at me and saying,
Don't take this personally.
Anne Sexton, 1969
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Blake
And did those feet in
ancient time
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant Land.
William Blake, 1810
Next | TOC> Arms and the Boy> Shakespeare
Once more unto the breach
KING HENRY: Once more unto the breach,
dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,