In Flanders Fieldsby John MacRae
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.
Dulce et decorum estby Wilfred Owen
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 gas-shells dropping softly 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,
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.
Judging Distances by Henry Reed
Not only how far away, but the way that you say it
Is very important. Perhaps you may never get
The knack of judging a distance, but at least you know
How to report on a landscape: the central sector,
The right of arc and that, which we had last Tuesday,
And at least you know
That maps are of time, not place, so far as the army
Happens to be concerned - the reason being,
Is one which need not delay us. Again, you know
There are only three kinds of tree, three only, the fir and the poplar,
And those which have bushy tops to; and lastly
That things only seem to be things.
A barn is not called a barn, to put it more plainly,
Or a field in the distance, where sheep may be safely grazing.
You must never be over-sure. You must say, when reporting:
At five o'clock in the central sector is a dozen
Of what appear to be animals; whatever you do
Don't call the bleeders sheep.
I'm sure that's quite clear; and suppose, for the sake of example,
The one at the end, asleep, endeavours to tell us
What he sees over there to the west, and how far away,
After first having come to attention. There to the west,
On the fields of summer the sun and the shadows bestow
Vestments of purple and gold.
How to Kill by Keith Douglas
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.
Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
Now. Death, like a familiar, hears
and look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the waves of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.
The weightless mosquito touches
Her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.
The still white dwellings are like a mirage in the heat,
And under the swaying elms a man and a woman
Lie gently together. Which is, perhaps, only to say
That there is a row of houses to the left of arc,
And that under some poplars a pair of what appear to be humans
Appear to be loving.
Well that, for an answer, is what we might rightly call
Moderately satisfactory only, the reason being,
Is that two things have been omitted, and those are important.
The human beings, now: in what direction are they,
And how far away, would you say? And do not forget
There may be dead ground in between.
There may be dead ground in between; and I may not have got
The knack of judging a distance. I will only venture
A guess that perhaps between me and the apparent lovers
(Who, incidentally, appear by now to have finished),
At seven o'clock from the houses, is roughly a distance
Of about one year and a half.
Tortures by Wislawa Szymborska
Nothing has changed.
The body is susceptible to pain;
it has to eat and breathe the air, and sleep;
it has thin skin, and the blood is just beneath it;
an adequate supply of teeth and fingernails;
its bones can be broken; its joints can be stretched.
In tortures, all this is taken into account.
Nothing has changed.
The body shudders as it shuddered
before the founding of Rome and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are just as they were, only the earth has grown smaller,
and what happens sounds as if it's happening in the next room.
Nothing has changed.
It's just that there are more people,
and beside the old offences new ones have sprung -
real, make-believe, short-lived, and non-existent.
But the howl with which the body answers to them,
was, is and ever will be a cry of innocence
according to the age-old scale and pitch.
Nothing has changed.
Except perhaps the manners, ceremonies, dances.
Yet the movement of hands to shield the head remains the same.
The body writhes, jerks and tries to pull away,
its legs fail, it falls, its knees jack-knife,
it bruises, swells, dribbles and bleeds.
Nothing has changed.
Except for the course of rivers,
the lines of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.
Amid those landscapes roams the soul,
disappears, returns, draws nearer, moves away,
a stranger to itself, elusive,
now sure, now uncertain of its own existence,
while the body is and is and is
and has nowhere to go.
To a Soldier in Hospital By Winifred M. Letts
COURAGE came to you with your boyhood’s grace
Of ardent life and limb.
Each day new dangers steeled you to the test,
To ride, to climb, to swim.
Your hot blood taught you carelessness of death 5
With every breath.
So when you went to play another game
You could not but be brave:
An Empire’s team, a rougher football field,
The end—perhaps your grave. 10
What matter? On the winning of a goal
You staked your soul.
Yes, you wore courage as you wore your youth
With carelessness and joy.
But in what Spartan school of discipline 15
Did you get patience, boy?
How did you learn to bear this long-drawn pain
And not complain?
Restless with throbbing hopes, with thwarted aims,
Impulsive as a colt, 20
How do you lie here month by weary month
Helpless, and not revolt?
What joy can these monotonous days afford
Here in a ward?
Yet you are merry as the birds in spring, 25
Or feign the gaiety,
Lest those who dress and tend your wound each day
Should guess the agony.
Lest they should suffer—this the only fear
You let draw near. 30
Greybeard philosophy has sought in books
And argument this truth,
That man is greater than his pain, but you
Have learnt it in your youth.
You know the wisdom taught by Calvary 35
At twenty-three.
Death would have found you brave, but braver still
You face each lagging day,
A merry Stoic, patient, chivalrous,
Divinely kind and gay. 40
You bear your knowledge lightly, graduate
Of unkind Fate.
Careless philosopher, the first to laugh,
The latest to complain,
Unmindful that you teach, you taught me this 45
In your long fight with pain:
Since God made man so good—here stands my creed—
God’s good indeed.
What Reward?Winifred Letts
You gave your life. Boy.And you gave a limb:But he who gave his precious wits,Say, what regard for him?One had his glory,One has found his rest.But what of this poor babbler hereWith chin sunk on his breast?Flotsam of battle,With brain bemused and dim,O God, for such a sacrificeSay, what reward for him?
Screens (In a Hospital) Winifred Mary Letts
They put the screens around his bed;
a crumpled heap I saw him lie,
White counterpane and rough dark head,
those screens — they showed that he would die.
The put the screens about his bed;
We might not play the gramophone,
And so we played at cards instead
And left him dying there alone.
The covers on the screens are red,
The counterpanes are white and clean;
He might have lived and loved and wed
But now he’s done for at nineteen.
An ounce or more of Turkish lead,
He got his wounds at SulvaBay
They’ve brought the Union Jack to spread
Upon him when he goes away.
He’ll want those three red screens no more,
Another man will get his bed,
We’ll make the row we did before
But — Jove! — I’m sorry that he’s dead.
Anna Akhmatova Poetry
Dedication
Before this sorrow mountains bow,
the vast river’s ceased to flow,
the ever-strong prison bolts
hold the ‘convict crews’ now,
abandoned to deathly longing.
For someone the sun glows red,
for someone the wind blows fresh –
but we know none of that, instead
we only hear the soldier’s tread,
keys scraping against our flesh.
Rising as though for early mass,
through the city of beasts we sped,
there met, breathless as the dead,
sun low, a mistier Neva. Far ahead,
hope singing still, as we passed.
Sentence given…tears pour out,
she thought she knew all separation,
in pain, blood driven from the heart,
as if she’s hurled to earth, apart,
yet walks…staggers…is in motion…
Where now my chance-met friends
of those two years satanic flight?
What Siberian storms do they resist,
and in what frosted lunar orb exist?
To them it is I send my farewell cry.
March 1940
Prologue
Those days, when only the dead
smiled, glad to be at peace,
andLeningrad, unneeded, swayed,
throwing wide its penitentiary.
When legions of the condemned,
maddened by torment, passed,
brief the songs of parting then,
the locomotives’ farewell blast,
Dead stars hung above us,
and blameless Russia writhed
under boots stained with blood,
and the Black Marias’ tyres.
1.
They took you away at dawn,
as though at a wake, I followed,
in the dark room weeping children,
among icons, the candle guttered.
On your lips, the chill of a cross,
on your brow a deathly pall.
I’ll be, like a woman to be shot,
dragged to the Kremlin wall.
1935.
2.Quiet flows the silent Don,
yellow moonlight fills the home.
Fills it, and falls askance,
yellow moon-ghost in its glance.
A woman there it is, makes moan,
a woman there, she lies alone,
Son in chains, husband clay,
pray for her, O pray.
3.
No it is not I, someone else is suffering.
I could not have borne it otherwise, all that’s happening,
let them grant to it a dark covering,
and let them take away the glittering…
Night.
4.
They should have shown you, little teaser,
little favourite, friend of all,
sylvan princess, happy charmer,
what situation would be yours –
as three-hundredth in the line
you’d stand, beneath the cross,
and let your tears’ hot brine
burn through New Year’s ice.
See the prison poplars sway,
without a sound – oh what a crowd
of innocent lives all end today…
5
Seventeen months I’ve pleaded
for you to come home.
Flung myself at the hangman’s feet,
my terror, oh my son.
And I can’t understand,
now all’s eternal confusion,
who’s beast, and who’s man,
how long till execution.
And only flowers of dust,
ringing of censers, tracks just
running somewhere, nowhere, far.
And deep in my eyes gazing,
swift, fatal, threatening,
one enormous star.
6.
Lightly the weeks fly, too,
what’s happened I can’t understand.
Just as, my darling child, in prison,
white nights gazed at you,
so now again they gaze,
hawk-eyed, passionate-eyed,
and of your cross on high,
of death, they speak today.
1939.
7. The Sentencing
It has fallen, the word of stone
on my living breast, now.
No matter, I was prepared, you know,
I’ll get by, somehow.
I’ve things to do today:
I must crush memory down,
I must turn my heart to stone,
I must try living, again.
And then….Hot summer whispers,
as if for a Black Sea holiday.
Long, long ago, I foresaw this
this empty house, this shining day.
Summer, 1939
8. To Death
You’ll come regardless – why not today?
I await you – life is very hard.
I’ve killed the lights, cleared the way
for you, so simple, such a marvel.
Take on any shape you wish,
burst in like a poisoned shell,
sidle in like a slick bandit,
or a typhus germ from hell.
Or a fairy-tale you’ve invented,
always sickeningly familiar –
where I see policemen’s heads,
and a concierge white with fear.
It’s all one now. The Yenisey swirling,
while the Pole star’s alight.
And in final terror closing
blessed eyes, blue and bright.
19th August 1939
The House on the Fontanka,
Leningrad.
9. Already madness hovers
obscuring half my mind,
I drink its wine: its fires
bring on darkness, blind.
I realise, I must yield,
the victory to it now,
must listen to it speak,
strange fever on my brow.
And I must take nothing
with me that’s my own
(how I am begging,
how I am disowned!):
not my son’s fearful eyes –
suffering, turned to stone,
not the day, that storms rise,
nor the prison meeting-room,
nor the blessed cool of his hands,
the lime-trees’ shady agitation,
nor the slender distant sounds
of his final consolation.
4th May 1940
The House on the Fontanka.
10. Crucifixion.
‘Mother, do not weep for me,
who am in the grave.’
Angelic choirs, the mighty hour of glory,
and heaven confused in the fiery deep.
To the Father: ‘Why hast thou forsaken me!’
But to the Mother: ‘O, do not weep…’
II
Magdalene beat her breast and wept,
the beloved disciple turned to stone,
but there, no one dared, no one looked
where the Mother stood, still, and alone.
1940-194
Epilogue
I learned to know how faces fall apart,
how fear, beneath the eye-lids, seeks,
how strict the cutting blade, the art
that suffering etches in the cheeks.
How the black, the ash-blond hair,
in an instant turned to silver,
learned how submissive lips fared,
learned terror’s dry racking laughter.
Not only for myself I pray,
but for all who stood there, all,
in bitter cold, or burning July day,
beneath that red, blind prison wall.
II
Once more, the remembered hour draws near.
I see you, I feel you, and I hear:
you, they could barely carry into line,
and you, whom earth claimed before your time,
and you, who shook your lovely head of hair,
saying: ‘As if this were home, I’m here’.
I’d like to summon you all by name,
But the lists are lost, un-found, again.
I’ve woven a great shroud for all, here,
out of poor words I chanced to overhear.
Remembering them always, everywhere,
unforgotten in each new terror’s care,
and if they shut my tormented lips, shut my
mouth where a hundred million people cry,
let them remember me, as well, today,
on the eve of my remembrance day.
And if ever in this my native country