I ran out of time to do this yesterday. (OK, I got sidetracked.) So, belatedly, in honor of Veterans Day, I give you some of the most moving poems written to honor fallen heroes.
I also highly recommend reading
The Teeth Mother Naked at Last by Robert Bly, which was too long to reproduce here, but which is especially pertinent now.
Suicide in the Trenches
Siegfried Sassoon
I KNEW a simple solder 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.
Noone 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.
In Flanders Fields
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.
The Messages
Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
"I cannot quite remember... There were five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench - and three
Whispered their last messages to me..."
Back from the trenches, more dead than alive,
Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee,
He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly:
"I cannot quite remember... There were five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three
Whispered their dying messages to me...
"Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive -
Waiting a word in silence patiently...
But what they said, or who their friends may be
"I cannot quite remember... There where five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench - and three
Whispered their dying messages to me...
In Memoriam
Ewart Alan Mackintosh
(killed in action 21 November 1917 aged 24)
(To Private D Sutherland killed in action in the German trenches, 16 May 1916, and the others who died.)
So you were David's father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.
Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.
You were only David's father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight -
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.
Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers',
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.
Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed 'Don't leave me, sir',
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.
