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

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrea was a surgeon in the Canadian Army attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade and he wrote this poem at the battle of Ypres in Flanders in May 1915.

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.

(First posted here October 2006)

I have been criticised for not posting any of the work of the established World War 1 Poets.

To make amends, I am presenting today one of my favourite poems by Wilfred Owen.

Owen wrote of his attitude to War-Poetry in this 'Preface', which was found, in an unfinished condition, among his papers:

"This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.

FUTILITY

Move him into the sun --
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds --
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, -- still warm, -- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Wilfred Owen

Our venerable father Isaac of Syria is a 7th century saint known for his strict asceticism and ascetic writings.

There he lived in solitude for many years studying the Scripture, but eventually blindness and old age forced him to retire to the monastery of Rabban Shabur, where he reposed and was buried. His feast day is January 28.

Icon of St. Isaac of Syria

BE AT PEACE WITH YOUR OWN SOUL

Be at peace with your own soul
then heaven & earth will be at peace with you.

Enter eagerly into the treasure
house that is within you,

And you will see the things that are in heaven,
for there is but one single entry to them both.

The ladder that leads to the Kingdom
is hidden within your soul...

Dive into yourself and in your soul
and you will discover the stairs
by which to ascend.

Saint Isaac of Syria (circa 7th century)

More saintly wisdom at: http://www.roca.org/OA/137/137d.htm

MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD

I miss the days when light stayed long
When comrades' dreams stood bright and strong
I miss the friend that I once had
Companionship through good and bad

When marching was a chance to sing
Of joys of home that memories bring:
Camp-fires, a chance to talk of plans
And haul together all life's strands

I long for smells of Harvest new,
The cleanliness of morning dew,
A Marbles game-we still are young
But winter's here - Our summer's done

Debris of guns and carnage flay
What once was warmth to cloudy day
And now you lie where grasses green
Have given o'er to muddy sheen

I miss the days when life was fair,
When naught but bird call rent the air
But you are gone, and I am sad
I miss the friend that I once had.

S J Robinson

STREET DOG

I was brought up to be just a big puppy,
Then they trained me to be an attack dog.
After my career as an attack dog
They said I didn't fit back into the pack any more,
And they wanted to have me put to sleep,
So I ran away and became a stray dog,
Lookin' for a kind handout, but expecting a kick.
I tried to get a job as a guard dog,
But after a few days I wouldn't even let the owner in.
Being a stray dog is no picnic,
But being old and a stray is a bitter fate for any dog,
Especially since I'm not a dog at all;
I'm an American veteran.

Sarge Lintecum

Listen to the writer reading his poem at:

http://vietnamblues.com/Sound/06%20Street%20Dog.mp3

A HAPPY WAR

Pacifism's such a bore—
I'm going to design a war
that even peaceniks won't abhor,
with pretty bombs and rosy gore,
songs that stir you to your core,
and moral stands you can't ignore.
There'll be no terror any more
when I've designed my happy war.

Tom Greening

ON YONDER HILL

On yonder hill, the poppies sway
In chilled, yet friendly wind today
Their petals drift like young men's lives
Taken far from root, to fall 'neath skies
Their petals grew, fell, fade away
As if they have a line to say
To teach us all that glory brief
Too often ends in soldier's grief
On yonder field, furrows score the ground
That once so clamoured, emits no sound
Each bay a story long could tell,
Of laughter sapped in youth's own hell
Of dreams unrealised, futures strewn,
Of pipe and Drums last defiant tune,
Of Ordered slaughter, new hopes lost.
To lie there, yonder, under wooden cross

S J Robinson

LIBERATED

They were taken from his book "HERE, BULLET" and here is the title poem.



HERE, BULLET

If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Brian Turner

Debbie W Parvin is a poet and freelance writer who currently resides in the mountains of Galax, Virginia.

Her book 'When Stones Speak' won Alabama State Poetry Society's Book of the Year for 2001.

PEACEMAKER

She never lit a candle in a vigil.
She never raised a voice for human rights.
She slept on public benches in the summer--
In basement shelters on cold, winter nights.

She never held a sign and demonstrated.
She moved no one to action with her words,
But in the park each day, by roaring traffic,

She knelt to share her bread crumbs with the birds.

Debbie Parvin

There is only one thing that is inevitable about the end of a war: Another one will soon come along.

THE END AND THE BEGINNING
by Wislawa Szmborska

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa-springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.

From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.

Wislawa Szmborska was a Polish poet. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996. She died in 2002, at the age of 79.

On August 6 1945, the day of the nuclear explosion over Hiroshima, Sankichi Toge was 28 years-old and living three kilometres from the centre of the city.

Two years later, at the age of 36, he died in the National Hiroshima Sanatorium.

GIVE BACK PEACE

Give back my father, give back my mother;
Give grandpa back, grandma back;
Give me my sons and daughters back.
Give me back myself.
Give back the human race.
As long as this life lasts, this life,
Give back peace
That will never end.

Sankichi Toge

NOTE:The bomb used at Hiroshima killed 140,000 people, mostly civilians. Since then, thousands more have died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation.

He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one."

A couple of days ago I brought you a poem written by the American soldier-poet, Brian Turner, about his experiences in Iraq.

Here is another from his book "Here, Bullet".

ASHBAH

The ghosts of American soldiers
wander the streets of Balad by night,
unsure of their way home, exhausted,
the desert wind blowing trash
down the narrow alleys as a voice
sounds from the minaret, a soulful call
reminding them how alone they are,
how lost. And the Iraqi dead,
they watch in silence from rooftops,
as date palms line the shore in silhouette,
leaning toward Mecca when the dawn wind blows.

Brian Turner

Balad is a town of approximately 100,000 inhabitants 50 miles north of Baghdad and is located within the borders of the so-called Sunni Triangle. However, Balad is primarily Shiite, which has led to considerable sectarian fighting. There is also an important military airstrip.

It is ironic that Walter de la Mare wrote this poem, referring to World War I ("The war to end all wars"), in 1938 - just one year before the next great conflict.

PEACE

Night is o'er England, and the winds are still;
Jasmine and honeysuckle steep the air;
Softly the stars that are all Europe's fill
Her heaven-wide dark with radiancy fair;
That shadowed moon now waxing in the west
Stirs not a rumour in her tranquil seas;
Mysterious sleep has lulled her heart to rest,
Deep even as theirs beneath her churchyard trees.

Secure, serene; dumb now the night-hawk's threat;
The guns' low thunder drumming o'er the tide;
The anguish pulsing in her stricken side....
All is at peace....But, never, heart, forget:
For this her youngest, best, and bravest died,
These bright dews once were mixed with bloody sweat.

From 'Memory and Other Poems' (1938)

Brian Turner is a soldier-poet who served for seven years in the U.S. Army. Beginning in November 2003, he was an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. The poem below was written to memorialize a soldier in his platoon who took his own life.

EULOGY
(PFC B. Miller 1980-March 22, 2004)

It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,
as tower guards eat sandwiches
and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.
Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.
The sound reverberates down concertina coils
the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
when Private Miller pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire into his mouth:
the sound lifts the birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices
crackle over the radio in static confusion,
because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,
and Private Miller has found what low hush there is
down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.

Brian Turner

Further to my comment yesterday, here are the usually accepted conditions for a war to be just.:

* The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.

How do our actions in Iraq measure up to that?

But today is a "Peace Day" on this blog and, in that spirit, I am bringing you this prayer, written by St. Francis of Assisi.

PRAYER OF PEACE

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)

You may remember that, on her election as Britain's first ever female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher stood on the steps of Number 10 and quoted the first verse (adapted) as a rallying call to the Conservatves.

P.S. What is that aircraft doing in the top left-hand corner of the painting of the Saint?

I have now posted here all the poems on the theme of "Love" that I shall be using at my next poetry-reading evening on May 1 and it is time to move on.

I have already been thinking about my subject for 2009 and have decided that it will be "War and Peace".

Now, there are many war poems, mostly from the First and Second World Wars, but very few about peace, so I may encounter some difficulty.

Many of you know that I begin all my poetry presentations with something from the Bible - so I have been reading the holy book.

It came as no surprise to find that our God is more likely to be shown as a God of War than a God of Peace.

How about this "Call to War" found in the book of Joel?

Say to the nations far and wide: "Get ready for war! Call out your best warriors! Let all your fighting men advance for the attack! Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Train even your weaklings to be warriors. Come quickly, all you nations everywhere! Gather together in the valley." And now, O LORD, call out your warriors! "Let the nations be called to arms. Let them march to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Jerusalem will be holy forever, and foreign armies will never conquer her again.

Perhaps that was a "Just War" (like our liberation of the Middle East!) - and tomorrow I shall try to define what that may mean.

I may also find encouraging biblical words for PEACE - but don't bank on it, despite this from Ecclesiastes:

"There is a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."

I am finishing today with a moving poem from Iraq.

NO FLOWERS, NO DOVES

When we entered the burning city
charred corpses greeted us.
A child's hand dangled from a scorched tree
and the twisted wreckage of a bus
mocked the stillness of the sky.
Gunner gagged, Ski scratched his head,
neither understanding why
he had to liberate the dead.

Leo Yankevich

John Godfrey Saxe was an American humorist poet of the nineteenth century, perhaps best known for his parable, "The Blindmen and the Elephant".

Here is one of his shorter poems.

DO I LOVE THEE?

Do I love thee? Ask the bee
If she loves the flowery lea,
Where the honeysuckle blows
And the fragrant clover grows.
As she answers, Yes or No,
Darling! take my answer so.

Do I love thee? Ask the bird
When her matin song is heard,
If she loves the sky so fair,
Fleecy cloud and liquid air.
As she answers, Yes, or No,
Darling! take my answer so.

Do I love thee? Ask the flower
If she loves the vernal shower,
Or the kisses of the sun,
Or the dew, when day is done.
As she answers, Yes or No,
Darling! take my answer so.

John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)

TO ELECTRA

I dare not ask a kiss,
I dare not beg a smile,
Lest having that, or this,
I might grow proud the while.

No, no, the utmost share
Of my desire shall be
Only to kiss that air
That lately kissed thee.

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

WHO EVER LOVED, THAT LOVED NOT AT FIRST SIGHT

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should love, the other win;

And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows; let it suffice
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

Christopher Marlowe

UPON A MOORLAND BARE

Love - what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life - what is life? Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I wrote yesterday "IT'S OVER" - meaning my current run of romantic poems.

However, I had a stack more lined up and, as I am very busy at the moment, the easiest thing to do is to continue posting.

Today's is by George Sterling - and here is a short biographical note:

George Sterling (1869-1926) was an American poet based in California who, during his time, was celebrated as one of the greatest American poets, although he never gained much fame in the rest of the country.

Kevin Starr wrote that "When George Sterling's corpse was discovered in his room at the Bohemian Club... the golden age of San Francisco's bohemia had definitely come to a miserable end."

This is a photo of him in 1926, shortly before he died.

Despite the title of today's poem, he doesn't look very cheerful here - does he?

HAPPIEST

Calling you now, not for your flesh I call,
Nor for the mad, long raptures of the night
And passion in its beauty and its might,
When the ecstatic bodies rise and fall.
I cannot feign: God knows I see it all--
The flaming senses, raving with delight,
The leopards, swift and terrible and white,
Within the loins that shudder as they crawl.
All that could I exultingly forego,
Could I but stand, one flash of time, and see
Your heavenly, entrancing face, and know
I stood most blest of all beneath the sun,
Hearing these words from your fond lips to me:
"I love, love you, and love no other one!

George Sterling

For the past two months I have been posting here poems for my forthcoming public poetry presentation "Making The World Go Round".

As I explained at the beginning, the subject is not Money, Music, Chocolate or Sex - but LOVE. I hope some of you may have enjoyed it and that it has not been too sugary.

There have been 54 poems, which is more than sufficient for my meeting, and we have now come to the end.

My final poem on this theme is "Song" by Sir John Suckling and here is a little about him:

Sir John Suckling (1609–42) was one of the English Cavalier poets.

On the failure of these endeavors Suckling fled to France, where, it is conjectured, being unable to face poverty, he was driven to suicide.

SONG

I prithee send me back my heart,
Since I cannot have thine :
For if from yours you will not part,
Why then shouldst thou have mine ?

Yet now I think on't, let it lie :
To find it were in vain,
For th' hast a thief in either eye
Would steal it back again.

Why should two hearts in one breast lie,
And yet not lodge together ?
O love, where is thy sympathy,
If thus our breasts thou sever ?

But love is such a mystery,
I cannot find it out :
For when I think I'm best resolv'd,
I then am in most doubt.

Then farewell care, and farewell woe,
I will no longer pine :
For I'll believe I have her heart
As much as she hath mine.

Sir John Suckling

Robert Graves (1895 – 1985) was a prolific English poet, scholar and novelist.