A poem a day,keeps the shrink away.

Since I was a little girl I have loved poetry,lyrics, in fact all rhyming words,not the posh pretentious stuff,just people poetry.I wonder if what I have read has influenced the way I think or vice versa.There is no telling,but this constant news from Afghanistan has had me re-reading the 'war poets'.Sassoon,Owen,Houseman et al.........all men who came to see war for the bloody mess that it is,still as relevant today as it was almost a century ago.

HERE DEAD WE LIE

Here dead we lie
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

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.

Wilfred Owen


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, petulent 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.

Siegfried Sassoon

Another by Sassoon.

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

I have come across a chap who is writing now about Afghanistan and Iraq,just something I stumbled on whilst touring the web.

…And Three Persons Known Only to God


And three persons known only to God
left unknown homes
and unknown loves,



took unknown paths
through unknown fields,
down unknown lanes



to sign unknown names
on unknown lists
for unknown cause.



Three unknown men
in unknown pain
died unknown deaths,



their unknown flesh
and unknown blood
in unknown mud.



Three unknown souls;
their unknown hopes,
their unknown dreams.



Our unknown loss.



“And three persons known only to God” : Words inscribed in the base of the Yeovil War Memorial.






John Hawkhead