“If in some smothering dreams…”
Today is the 11th of November, Remembrance Day. I was looking for something to post here and decided to go with the final verse of a poem by Wilfred Owen:
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.
May all now rest peacefully, who died in wars fought for people they likely had never met, likely would never meet.