I’ve lost a lot of things worth while my pleasure and my fun,
And the days of my captivity pass slowly one by one,
But as I sit in loneliness, each day more plain I see,
My body may be captive but my heart and mind are free.
He minded dem getting torpedoed i da White Sea,
hit blew da boo clean aff.
Da Bulksheid, he held though an dey limpit inta Arcangel,
whaur shu wis lashed ta da peir, an micht still be dere yet.
Harder
to find in the soundscape is our man,
the bell of his horn sanctifying the notes
in remembrance, or joy that the damned
thing is over
Ochone o for na gillean departed, Sundered by seas from us, buried afar.Gone are the lads who were leal and high-hearted And we are now dreeing the dolours of war.’Illean, ’illean, ’illean, Sorrow may fade but your fame shall endure,’Illean, ’illean, ’illean, While flower’s in the forest and wind’s on […]
August 1934 There’s a thin rain of music comes across the poppied corn, Across the poppied corn and the sun-splashed sea,Crying, ‘Who’s a-going venturing, a-venturing, a-venturing, Who’s a-going venturing with all a man can be?’O, listen, listen, listen, for it’s far, far away, The dim remembered country where the ghostly pipers blow,Across […]
Sassoon, the elder, Sunday golfer; / Owen, bookish, gangly, pale – mingling / with the queue for the refectory.
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest / To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The…
Now over the map that took ten million years
/ Of rain and sun to crust like boiler-slag,
/ The lines of fighting men…
He thought before the war
/ Of conflicts, heroism, enemies
/ Who had to be crushed;
/ Causes that had to be fought for.
/
/ He had no…
Who can gauge our range or pace? Every woman, / a signal tower, an illusion, a ship bearing dead ahead.
She walks on the charred ground, wings of smoke
/ from the bones of her home rising.
/
/ ‘Here was, there used to be,…
He was digging, digging, digging with his little pick and spade,
/ And when the Dawn was rising it was trenches that…
