Futility (apologies to Wilfred Owen)

Forget, forget,

Her rallying cry;

Forget, forget

The reason why;

Forget, forget

Our fathers lied,

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all?

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/38ea2e27d86aac206fb6bcbeab84dec1c4d15fda/3_0_3030_1819/master/3030.jpg?width=700&quality=45&auto=...

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The Next War Is Here

Out there, we walked quite friendly up to death,

Sat down and ate beside him, cool and bland,

Asked of his health and shook him by the hand.

Recoiled in horror at his fetid breath.

Before the world went crazy, he was there,

We treated him as though he was a fly

Who we could swat away - and never die.

We were invincible, without a care.

Now ...

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Nunquam Iterum!

Dear Wilfred

Thank you for your honesty

Without your vivid colours

These experiences would be shadows

Colourless and somehow unreal

But now we see sickly colours of the gas

We feel the helpless panic of the scurry

We touch the comrade writhing in the deadly sea

Your stressed heartbeat

The hopelessness of loss

Despair at the trudge

The d...

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Those bells rang and rang and rang
In absence of all now gone from us
All in this earth their life lives long
As those bells clatter the silent songs

Youth slaughtered cattle in this earth 
For red bright poppies that sprout to life
Breaking through braved blooded soil
Enriched by a youth of lost loved souls 

Time fated a 100 years ago by chance 
Angelic eyes and soft youthful faces
...

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https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/scotland/first-world-war-poets-honoured-with-violins-crafted-from-military-hospital-tree/

The Song Of Trees

They sat here,

back in nineteen seventeen,

beneath my caring arms.

I kept the August sun

from their fevered brows

as piece by piece

they pulled themselves

together.

Their stories made me weep

rainfall

from sy...

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Death Of A Poet

The grey November sky has lost its light,
just one more boy has fallen to his death,
another lad who won’t survive the fight
or pass beyond this final exhaled breath.
Though many soldiers leave this war unheard,
their stories lost forever, never told,
this one will paint us pictures with his words
that will not lose their power or grow old.

A week beyond that fatal can...

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