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.
Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor anything about glory, honour,dominion or power,except War.
Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry. The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are not to this generation. This is in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next.
All the poet can do to-day is to warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.
If I thought the letter of this book would last,I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives Prussia, my ambition and those names will be content; for they will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders."
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
29/04/08 @ 09:41