502 War poems

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind. Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above them, Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom— A field where a thousand corpses lie. Do not weep, babe, for war is kind. Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches, Raged at his breast, gulped and died, Do not weep. War is kind. Swift, blazing flag of the regiment, Eagle with crest of red and gold, These men were born to drill and die. Point for them the virtue of slaughter, Make plain to them the excellence of killing And a field where a thousand corpses lie. Mother whose heart hung humble as a button On the bright splendid shroud of your son, Do not weep. War is kind.

I explain the silvered passing of a ship at night The sweep of each sad lost wave The dwindling boom of the steel thing's striving The little cry of a man to a man A shadow falling across the greyer night And the sinking of the small star. Then the waste, the far waste of waters And the soft lashing of black waves For long and in loneliness. Remember, thou, oh ship of love Thou leavest a far waste of waters And the soft lashing of black waves For long and in loneliness.

There is something in the sound of drum and fife That stirs all the savage instincts into life. In the old times of peace we went our ways, Through proper days Of little joys and tasks. Lonely at times, When from the steeple sounded wedding chimes, Telling to all the world some maid was wife— But taking patiently our part in life As it was portioned us by Church and State, Believing it our fate. Our thoughts all chaste Held yet a secret wish to love and mate Ere youth and virtue should go quite to waste. But men we criticised for lack of strength, And kept them at arm's length. Then the war came— The world was all aflame! The men we had thought dull and void of power Were heroes in an hour. He who had seemed a slave to petty greed Showed masterful in that great time of need. He who had plotted for his neighbour's pelf, Now for his fellows offers up himself. And we were only women, forced by war To sacrifice the things worth living for. Something within us broke, Something within us woke, The wild cave-woman spoke. When we heard the sound of drumming, As our soldiers went to camp, Heard them tramp, tramp, tramp; As we watched to see them coming, And they looked at us and smiled (Yes, looked back at us and smiled), As they filed along by hillock and by hollow, Then our hearts were so beguiled That, for many and many a day, We dreamed we heard them say, 'Oh, follow, follow, follow!' And the distant, rolling drum Called us 'Come, come, come!' Till our virtue seemed a thing to give away. War had swept ten thousand years away from earth. We were primal once again. There were males, not modern men; We were females meant to bring their sons to birth. And we could not wait for any formal rite, We could hear them calling to us, 'Come to-night; For to-morrow, at the dawn, We move on!' And the drum Bellowed, 'Come, come, come!' And the fife Whistled, 'Life, life, life!' So they moved on and fought and bled and died; Honoured and mourned, they are the nation's pride. We fought our battles, too, but with the tide Of our red blood, we gave the world new lives. Because we were not wives We are dishonoured. Is it noble, then, To break God's laws only by killing men To save one's country from destruction? We took no man's life but gave our chastity, And sinned the ancient sin To plant young trees and fill felled forests in. Oh, clergy of the land, Bible in hand, All reverently you stand, On holy thoughts intent While barren wives receive the sacrament! Had you the open visions you could see Phantoms of infants murdered in the womb, Who never knew a cradle or a tomb, Hovering about these wives accusingly. Bestow the sacrament! Their sins are not well known— Ours to the four winds of the earth are blown.

Working with one eye closed or heads buried under their drapes, they focus to preserve the drowned shell-hole, the salient's rubble of dead, the bleached bones of sepoys torn from the earth. Their stills haunt us: a stretcher piled with skulls at Cold Harbour, graves in a barren wood that in one hour's carnage lost its name to history and the world's memory of death. The worst has happened, they confirm the worst: but show us too the makeshift hospital, the sad errand of the hospital van among the ruins. Also enough of sky to suggest the infinity of angles, that behind sandbags, under the hostile towers someone is finding time for a wry note on bowel movements, an entry that affirms the loved salience of what is always there: flower of Auschwitz, bird of the Western Front.

Try as much as I can try not to be I, nevertheless, I would mind that so much. . . said the oats to the water . . . which was working up to a boil . . . See, I said . . . to my daughter . . . Even oats . . . even oats maybe mind the boil . . . mind becoming oatmeal . . . For there was a small matter . . . Oleg had sent me a letter . . . I was to become . . . under Oleg’s orders . . . an angel . . . But we were late for school . . . We should be frantically . . . fossicking . . . but no, not if I was . . . dying . . . always late . . . I AM TO BECOME . . . I announced to her . . . before breakfast . . . AN ANGEL PRESENCE . . . I sugarcoated it . . . an angel who will bread your house . . . with lily dust . . . Why would I need lily dust . . . You’ll know when you’re an adult . . . Oleg . . . due any minute . . . I was telling her how I’d be . . . constantly . . . crossing over . . . to visit her . . . She asked . . . Will I know who you are? . . . Well not at first . . . No . . . But I am sure you will always be gracious . . . She was questioning things . . . very . . . worldlily . . . which sounds like she was making the world’s weight . . . into a delicate petal . . . of flower cellulose . . . but no . . . just . . . worldly is what she is . . . was . . . Once . . . when you were thirty-two . . . and in that attic apartment . . . and you . . . well . . . I understood . . . And you were cold . . . And I kissed your head . . . The top of it . . . In order to smell your hair . . . Mom don’t smell my head . . . I’m not even eight yet . . . Right . . . Yes . . . I must have been having a nucleolytic episode . . . in which I foresaw . . .Mom . . . I heard her . . . I was still there but already . . . in the . . . underbelly . . . ? I was thinking of a lovely girl I knew . . . Last name De Flamand . . . she once wrote a lovely piece . . . about the world daffodil. . . and the difference . . . between yellow and yellowy . . . Mom . . . How nice it was going to be . . . to fit in . . . the underneath . . . or overhead . . . what have you . . . happily! . . . It was all coming to a sharp point . . . Had to get back to the present . . . for a moment . . . See . . . I said to my daughter . . . See . . . Even oats mind becoming oatmeal . . . We were staring down into the saucepan . . . my daughter in my arms . . . we played Taps. . . on our lips . . . in honor of the oats . . . I was present for that peculiarly sad moment . . . and still am . . . afterward . . .

War the war, the sorry edge of us, because we stacked nice clean plates for days, we were sure things when love broke across the headland, leaving conch shells in ditches, five fish slapping on the steps of the old town hall, it was winter, we were bonfires unattended, our bodies litigating, agreeing and writing it all down, the law of legs, the law of how we sleep, the law of shoulders killing me, and now we fold clothes without thinking my clothes your clothes and war the war o happy war what love we are so badly bitten in this long-term necessary chapel with all attendant relics, citronella candle, junior hacksaw, a box of miscellaneous wires, our headland way-way underwater, no one else beside us but ourselves beside ourselves.

for Clara Fraser I do not understand why men make war. Is it because artillery is the most stoic example of what flesh can become? Is it because the military plan is the final map drawn by the wisest hunter? Is it because the neutron ray is the invincible finger no one will disobey? or Is it because the flood of blood is the proper penance workers must pay for failing tribute at the prescribed hour? I do not understand why men make war. Is it because when death is multiple and expanding, there among the odd assemblages, arbitrary and unnamed, there among the shrivelled mountains, distorted and hollow, there among the liquid farms and cities, cold and sallow, there among the splintered bones of children, women, men and cattle there and only there, the eerie head of power is being born? Is it because submission is the only gesture to be rehearsed, to be dressed, to be modeled, to be cast, to be chosen in the one and only one drama to be staged in the theater of this world, where everyone must act with the backbone humbled with the mascara of bondage, with the lipstick of slaves under the light of gentle assassination with applause piercing the ground forever? or Is it because war is the secret room of all things to be kept sealed and contained, to be conquered and renamed woman enclosed by an empire of walls, vaults, hinges and locks with the hot key that men and only men must possess for an eternal evening to visit and contemplate, to snap open a favorite window and gaze at the calibrated murder as lovers of beauty?

During a tempest encountered homeward-bound from the Mediterranean, a grizzled petty-officer, one of the two captains of the forecastle, dying at night in his hammock, swung in the sick-bay under the tiered gun-decks of the British Dreadnought, 98, wandering in his mind, though with glimpses of sanity, and starting up at whiles, sings by snatches his good-bye and last injunctions to two messmates, his watchers, one of whom fans the fevered tar with the flap of his old sou'-wester. Some names and phrases, with here and there a line, or part of one; these, in his aberration, wrested into incoherency from their original connection and import, he involuntarily derives, as he does the measure, from a famous old sea-ditty, whose cadences, long rife, and now humming in the collapsing brain, attune the last flutterings of distempered thought. Farewell and adieu to you noble hearties,— Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain, For I’ve received orders for to sail for the Deadman, But hope with the grand fleet to see you again. I have hove my ship to, with main-top-sail aback, boys; I have hove my ship to, for to strike soundings clear— The black scud a’flying; but, by God’s blessing, dam’ me, Right up the Channel for the Deadman I’ll steer. I have worried through the waters that are call d the Doldrums, And growled at Sargasso that clogs while ye grope— Blast my eyes, but the light-ship is hid by the mist, lads:— Flying Dutchman —odds bobbs—off the Cape of Good Hope! But what’s this I feel that is fanning my cheek, Matt? The white goney’s wing?—how she rolls!—’t is the Cape! Give my kit to the mess, Jock, for kin none is mine, none; And tell Holy Joe to avast with the crape. Dead reckoning, says Joe , it won’t do to go by; But they doused all the glims, Matt, in sky t’ other night. Dead reckoning is good for to sail for the Deadman; And Tom Deadlight he thinks it may reckon near right. The signal!—it streams for the grand fleet to anchor. The captains—the trumpets—the hullabaloo! Stand by for blue-blazes, and mind your shank-painters, For the Lord High Admiral, he’s squinting at you! But give me my tot , Matt, before I roll over; Jock, let’s have your flipper, it’s good for to feel; And don’t sew me up without baccy in mouth, boys, And don’t blubber like lubbers when I turn up my keel.

My deaf cousin had a hand in designing the Tomahawk Missile. The blueprints open on his desk for what was to become a show-and-tell-style reunion. I hadn’t laid eyes on this exuberant man since chance threw us together at a party given by his best friend whose brother was your

“This bubble had to be burst, & the only way to do it was to go right into the heart of the Arab world & smash something.” The hotel heiress, snapped flashing her bum in a Bahamas club. To go right into the heart of the Arab world, they claim their device can trigger an orgasm: flashing her bum in a Bahamas club on a boozy date with her new bloke, Nick Carter. They claim their device can trigger an orgasm. American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity on a boozy date with her new bloke, Nick Carter, say he confessed under torture in Syria. American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity without touching a women’s genital area say he confessed under torture in Syria. “There’s no explanation why. We’re just not saying anything.” Without touching a women’s genital area, I take it all seriously. I am withdrawing from all representation. There’s no explanation why. We’re just not saying anything to make this objective absolutely clear. I take it all seriously. I am withdrawing from all representation, but he was in the special removal unit. To make this objective absolutely clear, the development of counterterrorism technologies— but he was in the special removal unit. This had profoundly shocked the commission, the development of counterterrorism technologies with the flick of a switch. Women get turned on. This had profoundly shocked the commission. No one detected any radical political views. With the flick of a switch, women get turned on to a new business model that only pretends no one detected any radical political views. I take it all seriously. I am withdrawing from all representation to a new business model that only pretends to give consumers more control. In fact, I take it all seriously. I am withdrawing from all representation that she refused to be photographed in body paint to give consumers more control. In fact, he was handcuffed and beaten repeatedly. That she refused to be photographed in body paint constitutes an integral goal of the IOA. He was handcuffed and beaten repeatedly. There’s no explanation why. An information whiteout constitutes an integral goal of IOA while Justice turns to Syria’s secret police. There’s no explanation why. An information whiteout. Forebodings of disaster enter into box scores while Justice turns to Syria’s secret police, constructing systems to counter asymmetric threats. Forebodings of disaster enter into box scores to achieve total information awareness, constructing systems to counter asymmetric threats. This bubble had to be burst, and the only way to do it was to achieve total information awareness & smash something. The hotel heiress snapped.