Amazing War Poem From An Unknown Friend....

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survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Original Post - Sep 19, 2014 - 04:33pm PT
Remember the war poet Keith Douglas, killed in Normandy in 1944, aged 24.

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Sep 19, 2014 - 04:39pm PT
Beautiful. Describes the awful waste of war. We humans seem destined for war, our tragic flaw.

Have you read "All Quiet on the Western Front."? A heart rending novella about the useless carnage of WW1.,,.the so callled war to end all wars.

We just will never, never learn.
bvb

Social climber
flagstaff arizona
Sep 19, 2014 - 04:47pm PT
The name of that poem is "Vergissmeinnicht."
bvb

Social climber
flagstaff arizona
Sep 19, 2014 - 04:52pm PT
Here's one of my favorite poems from the Great War:

High Wood

Ladies and gentlemen, this is High Wood,
Called by the French, Bois des Fourneaux,
The famous spot which in Nineteen-Sixteen,
July, August and September was the scene
Of long and bitterly contested strife,
By reason of its High commanding site.
Observe the effect of shell-fire in the trees
Standing and fallen; here is wire; this trench
For months inhabited, twelve times changed hands;
(They soon fall in), used later as a grave.
It has been said on good authority
That in the fighting for this patch of wood
Were killed somewhere above eight thousand men,
Of whom the greater part were buried here,
This mound on which you stand being...
Madame, please,
You are requested kindly not to touch
Or take away the Company's property
As souvenirs; you'll find we have on sale
A large variety, all guaranteed.
As I was saying, all is as it was,
This is an unknown British officer,
The tunic having lately rotted off.
Please follow me - this way ...
The path, sir, please
The ground which was secured at great expense
The Company keeps absolutely untouched,
And in that dug-out (genuine) we provide
Refreshments at a reasonable rate.
You are requested not to leave about
Paper, or ginger-beer bottles, or orange-peel,
There are waste-paper-baskets at the gate.
wilbeer

Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
Sep 19, 2014 - 04:58pm PT
I remember reading that once,It's imagery remains to this day.
Avery

climber
NZ
Sep 19, 2014 - 07:06pm PT
Simplify Me When I'm Dead
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.

As the processes of earth
strip off the colour of the skin:
take the brown hair and blue eye

and leave me simpler than at birth,
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky.

Of my skeleton perhaps,
so stripped, a learned man will say
"He was of such a type and intelligence," no more.

Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore

the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.

Time's wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.

Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,

not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled,
leisurely arrive at an opinion.

Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.


Keith Douglas
Avery

climber
NZ
Sep 19, 2014 - 07:19pm PT
(Son to father…)

Do not call me, father. Do not seek me.
Do not call me. Do not wish me back.

We're on a route uncharted, fire and blood erase our track.
On we fly, on wings of thunder, never more to sheath our swords.
All of us in battle fallen – not to be brought back by words.

Will there be a rendezvous? I know not. I only know we still must fight.
We are sand grains in infinity, never to meet, nevermore see light.

(Father to son…)

Farewell then my son. Farewell then my conscience.
My youth, and my solace my one and my only.

And let this farewell be the end of a story
Of solitude vast and which none is more lonely.
In which you remain, barred forever and ever
From light and from air, with your death pangs untold.
Untold and unsoothed, not to be resurrected.
Forever and ever, an 18 year old.

Farewell then. No trains ever come from those regions
Unscheduled or scheduled. No aeroplanes fly there.
Farewell then my son, for no miracles happen,
As in this world dreams do not come true come true.

Farewell.

I will dream of you still as a baby,
Treading the earth with little strong toes,
The earth where already so many lie buried.
This song to my son, is come to its close

"Do Not Call Me" by Junior Lieutenant Vladimir Pavlovich Antokolovski
Killed in action, 6th June 1942.

Avery

climber
NZ
Sep 19, 2014 - 07:41pm PT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRpyHxVBY3s The above poem as read by
Sir Laurence Olivier. It's truly heartbreaking
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 19, 2014 - 07:46pm PT
Wow Avery. I didn't know you were a poetry nut.

I only dabble until I cry occasionally.

Thanks.

Please light up some more dim trails, if you must......
Ghost

climber
A long way from where I started
Sep 19, 2014 - 07:47pm PT
A Song of the Sandbags
No, Bill, I'm not a-spooning out no patriotic tosh
(The cove be'ind the sandbags ain't a death-or-glory cuss).
And though I strafes 'em good and 'ard I doesn't 'ate the Boche,
I guess they're mostly decent, just the same as most of us.
I guess they loves their 'omes and kids as much as you or me;
And just the same as you or me they'd rather shake than fight;
And if we'd 'appened to be born at Berlin-on-the-Spree,
We'd be out there with 'Ans and Fritz, dead sure that we was right.

A-standin' up to the sandbags
It's funny the thoughts wot come;
Starin' into the darkness,
'Earin' the bullets 'um;
(ZING! ZIP! PING! RIP!
'ARK 'OW THE BULLETS 'UM!)
A-leanin' against the sandbags
Wiv me rifle under me ear,
Oh, I've 'ad more thoughts on a sentry-go
Than I used to 'ave in a year.

I wonder, Bill, if 'Ans and Fritz is wonderin' like me
Wot's at the bottom of it all? Wot all the slaughter's for?
'E thinks 'e's right (of course 'e ain't) but this we both agree,
If them as made it 'ad to fight, there wouldn't be no war.
If them as lies in feather beds while we kips in the mud;
If them as makes their fortoons while we fights for 'em like 'ell;
If them as slings their pot of ink just 'ad to sling their blood:
By Crust! I'm thinkin' there 'ud be another tale to tell.

Shiverin' up to the sandbags,
With a hicicle 'stead of a spine,
Don't it seem funny the things you think
'Ere in the firin' line:
(WHEE! WHUT! ZIZ! ZUT!
LORD! 'OW THE BULLETS WHINE!)
Hunkerin' down when a star-shell
Cracks in a sputter of light,
You can jaw to yer soul by the sandbags
Most any old time o' night.

They talks o' England's glory and a-'oldin' of our trade,
Of Empire and 'igh destiny until we're fair flim-flammed;
But if it's for the likes o' that that bloody war is made,
Then wot I say is: Empire and 'igh destiny be damned!
There's only one good cause, Bill, for poor blokes like us to fight:
That's self-defence, for 'earth and 'ome, and them that bears our name;
And that's wot I'm a-doin' by the sandbags 'ere to-night. . . .
But Fritz out there will tell you 'e's a-doin' of the same.

Starin' over the sandbags,
Sick of the 'ole damn thing;
Firin' to keep meself awake,
'Earin' the bullets sing.
(HISS! TWANG! TSING! PANG!
SAUCY THE BULLETS SING.)
Dreamin' 'ere by the sandbags
Of a day when war will cease,
When 'Ans and Fritz and Bill and me
Will clink our mugs in fraternity,
And the Brotherhood of Labour will be
The Brotherhood of Peace.

Robert Service
guido

Trad climber
Santa Cruz/New Zealand/South Pacific
Sep 19, 2014 - 08:01pm PT
ROBINSON JEFFERS

The Soul's Desert

They are warming up the old horrors, and all that they
-----say is echoes of echoes.
Beware of taking sides; only watch.
These are not criminals, nor hucksters and little jour-
-----nalists, but the governments
Of the great nations; men favorably
Representative of massed humanity. Observe them.
-----Wrath and laughter
Are quite irrelevant. Clearly it is time
To become disillusioned each person to enter his own
-----soul's desert
And look for God—having seen man.



The Bloody Sire

It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world's values.

What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jeweled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world's values.

Who would remember Helen's face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world's values.

Never weep, let them play,
Old violence is not too old to beget new values.




Their Beauty Has More Meaning

Yesterday morning enormous the moon hung low on the
-----ocean,
Round and yellow-rose in the glow of dawn;
The night herons flapping home wore dawn on their
-----wings. Today
Black is the ocean, black and sulphur the sky,
And white seas leap. I honestly do not know which day
-----is more beautiful.
I know that tomorrow or next year or in twenty years
I shall not see these things—and it does not matter, it
-----does not hurt.
They will be here. And when the whole human race
Has been like me rubbed out, they will still be here:
-----storms, moon and ocean,
Dawn and the birds. And I say this: their beauty
-----has more meaning
Than the whole human race and the race of birds.







Advice to Pilgrims

That our senses lie and our minds trick us is true, but in
-----general
They are honest rustics; trust them a little;
The senses more than the man, and your own mind more
-----than another man's.
As to the mind's pilot, intuition—
Catch him clean and stark naked, he is the first of truth-
-----tellers; dream-clothed, or dirty
With fears and wishes, he is prince of liars.
The first fear is of death: trust no immortalist. The first
-----desire
Is to be loved: trust no mother's son.
Finally I say let demagogues and world redeemers bab-
-----ble their emptiness
To empty ears; twice duped is too much.
Walk on gaunt shores and avoid the people; rock and
-----wave are good prophets;
Wise are the wings of the gull, pleasant her song.








survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Topic Author's Reply - Sep 19, 2014 - 10:22pm PT
Good stuff boys.

Thanks.
Avery

climber
NZ
Sep 20, 2014 - 12:28am PT
Thanks guido, much food for thought here
Wayno

Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
Sep 20, 2014 - 12:31am PT
Yeah Guido, Thanks for the Jeffers. One of my heroes.
Avery

climber
NZ
Sep 20, 2014 - 05:41am PT


War is evil
War is the devil
War is between politicians
War is about religions
War is destruction
War is not construction
War is depression
War is an obsession
War is fighting
War is killing
War is sorrow
War is no tomorrow
War is explosions
War is confusions
War is blood
War brings tears like a flood
War makes you cry
War makes you die
War is death all around
War makes you die on foreign ground
War is fire
War is not to admire!
War is creed
War is between different breed
War is cruel
War cost a lot of fuel
War is amputations
War is mutilations
War last forever
I wonder if it ends in Heaven
War is only release
For those who are killed
It means 'PEACE'

Tetske van der Wal
couchmaster

climber
Sep 20, 2014 - 07:14am PT
The poem that struck me. By Wilfred Owen called "Dulce Et Decorum Est"


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 towards 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 disappointed shells 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 floundering 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 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.





On a trip to JT once I stopped in to see my grandfather. I asked him, "Grandpa, what was WW1 like?"

There was about a 5 min pause during which neither of us spoke. I wasn't sure he had heard me, but wasn't going to press him. He'd been a Marine in the trenches of Belgium, it's his business if he wanted to talk about it or not. Finally, he looks right at me and says "Horrible".

That was all I ever heard about it before or after.

bvb

Social climber
flagstaff arizona
Sep 20, 2014 - 09:27am PT
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

~Randall Jarrell, 1914 - 1965
Avery

climber
NZ
Sep 20, 2014 - 04:23pm PT
Nice post couchmaster, thanks
Avery

climber
NZ
Sep 20, 2014 - 05:20pm PT
Many thanks sycorax, "War is Kind" is especially moving
Avery

climber
NZ
Sep 21, 2014 - 01:27am PT
Soldier's Farewell

I've saddled up, and dropped me hooch,
I'm going to take the gap,
my Tour of Duty's over mates,
and I won't be coming back.

I'm done with diggin' shell scrapes
and laying out barbed wire,
I'm sick of setting Claymore Mines,
and coming under fire.

So no more Fire Support Base,
and no more foot patrols,
and no more eating ration packs,
and sleepin' in muddy holes.

I've fired my last machine gun,
and ambushed my last track,
I'm sick of all the Army brass,
and I sure ain't coming back.

I'll hand my bayonet to the clerk,
he ain't seen one before,
and clean my rifle one more time,
and return it to the store.

So no more spit and polish,
and make sure I get paid,
and sign me from the Regiment,
today's my last parade.

 Mike Subritzky, 161 Bty RNZA
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