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Never Such Innocence Again

World War I Poems

I understand that our war in Vietnam was nowhere near the scope and the suffering of their war in the trenches. Still, how many battles does it take and how many have to die . . . For me, these poems capture the unspeakable realities and vile lies of war.

From Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Life and Contacts) by Ezra Pound

IV

These fought in any case,

And some believing,

Pro domo, in any case . . .

 

Some for adventure,

Some from fear of weakness,

Some from fear of censure,

Some for love of slaughter, in imagination,

learning later . . .

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;

Died some, pro patria,

non "dulce" non "et decor" . . .

walked eye-deep in hell

believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving

came home, home to a lie,

home to many deceits,

home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick

and liars in public places.

 

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.

Young blood and high blood,

fair cheeks and fine bodies;

 

fortitude as never before

 

frankness as never before,

disillusions as never told in the old days,

hysterias, trench confessions,

laughter out of dead bellies.

 

V

 

There died a myriad,

And of the best,

among them.

For an old bitch gone in the teeth,

For a botched civilization.

 

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,

Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

 

For two gross of broken statues

For a few thousand battered books.

 

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen, killed on the Western Front a week before the end of the War

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 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 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.

 

Common Form by Rudyard Kipling, whose son (an Irish Guard) was killed in the war.

If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.

 

AFTERMATH: March 1919 by Siegfried Sassoon

Have you forgotten yet? . . .

For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,

Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:

And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow

 

Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,

Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.

But the past is just the same - and War's a bloody game . . .

Have you forgotten yet? . . .

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

 

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz -

The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?

Do you remember the rats; the stench

Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench -

And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?

Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"

 

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack -

And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then

as you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?

Do you remember the stretcher cases lurching back

With dying eyes and lolling heads - those ashen-grey

Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

 

Have you forgotten yet? . . .

Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

 

In Memorium (Easter 1915) by Edward Thomas, killed in 1917 on the Western Front.

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood

This Eastertide call into mind the men,

Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should

Have gathered them and will do never again.

 

So many dead and for what?