I apologise for the lateness of the Sunday Poem. I am sorry to say that the Wartime Housewife went to a party last night and got, in the modern parlance, trashed. Also the computing machine is on yet another ‘go slow’.
I do not apologise, however, for my choice of Remembrance Day Poem. Wilfred Owen is my favourite poet, indeed one of my children is named after him, and also after a great uncle who died on day one of the Battle of The Somme .
I studied this poem for a Speech and Drama Exam at school and the imagery of it has never left me. I think in these times, when the morality of conflict is so uncertain, the irony of the final words, translated as “How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country” seems more appropriate than ever.
Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen 1893-1918
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out 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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick boys! – An ecstacy 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, though 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 writing 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.
Wartime Housewife 