It is time to drag out the anti-war poetry.
War is Kind
by Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep
War is kind.
Horse, 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 hear hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep,
War is kind.
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
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 toward 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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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 flound’ring 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 writing 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: Ducle et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Its time to know what we’re asking. And I’m not sure that we know. I’m not sure its okay to send men off to die when we don’t know who the enemy is anymore. Or maybe when we’re just out-gunned with evil. Who sets a trap designed to slaughter those going to the aid of the wounded? Not anyone I’d want to die for. Not anyone I’d want to defend.
