Apparently the son has war poems next term. The best of these are old and not fashionable. In part because there has been a filter: the dross has been removed by time’s crucible. Owen is good…
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,
Obscene as cancer, 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.
This is new, and from the same war, but written 90 years later….
They were rum faced, blushing young Hauraki men
half pissed and smoking last cigarettes and fags in quiet groups,
…in the jumping off trench. Young men from Waihi, Paeroa, Tauranga,
Te Puna, Katikati, Kopu and Thames.
Dutch courage be buggered, Nelson had it right all along,
this was to be his 9th time over the top…”jumping the bags,”
and the rum cut right through, and “cotton-wooled”
the terror that was to shortly come…and it would come;
they all knew it.
But this, is just horrible.
We charged in our Storm Trooper costumes
Blinding faceless shapes through dirty glass
With rifle mounted lasers
We were jumpy
We were ready
But Kipling is the Master. He is deeply unfashionable, and I find him somewhat prophetic.
The smoke upon your Altar dies, The flowers decay, The Goddess of your sacrifice Has flown away. What profit then to sing or slay The sacrifice from day to day? "We know the Shrine is void," they said. "The Goddess flown -- "Yet wreaths are on the altar laid -- "The Altar-Stone "Is black withfumes of sacrifice, "Albeit She has Bed our eyes. "For, it may be, if still we sing "And tend the Shrine, "Some Deity on wandering wing "May there incline, "And, finding all in order meet, "Stay while we Worship at Her feet. Kipling, L'envoi