War Poems, The war seen from a poet's eyes.

[celticlord]

MY SON

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They stole him from me to send him off to war,
and there he stayed to fight and die till it was done.
It’s bad when governments steal sons from you,
and he was by son.
They said this war had to be fought
And that it was for a just and noble cause.
So, since I was patriotic and voted for them,
I stood by their laws.
But it always seems to be the young who go
And against whom the scales of death are swung.
It's bad when governments send young men off to die,
And my son was young.


For what matters to them of a million deaths
When war is the tender of life they promote?
You can be sure when their reelection comes up,
They won’t get by vote!
For the enemy is now my chosen leader,
The enemy called peace that all governments abhor!
And you can be sure they won’t get any more of my sons,
Till they end all war.
Oh they may think they can get away with murder
and do any damn thing they feel must be done,
but they won’t take what I love away from me again,
And I loved by son





Attached Image. (Click thumbnail to expand)

[tallerlacuba]

The Happy Warrior


His wild heart beats with painful sobs,
His strin'd hands clench an ice-cold rifle,
His aching jaws grip a hot parch'd tongue,
His wide eyes search unconsciously.

He cannot shriek.


Bloody saliva
Dribbles down his shapeless jacket.


I saw him stab
And stab again
A well-killed Boche.


This is the happy warrior,
This is he...



Herbert Read

[englishmix]

Here is a beautiful poem put to music by Smithfield Fair. Its about a Scottish wife bereft of husband and sons through warfare and government. Hope you enjoy it...


WILL IT BE THE KING?

(Dudley-Brian Smith, ©1994, BMI)

All that is most dear has now been taken away

They laughed at all my tears,

And sent a braw lad to the grave.

My husband hung by Englishmen

His crime was he was poor.

Now their king demands my sons

With soldiers at my door

Who will till the earth? Who will cut the peat?

Who will build the dry-stane dykes?

Will it be the king?

Will the king mind my sheep that wander on the moor?

Now that he’s hung my husband dear

And marched my sons to war,

Will it be the king? Will it be the king?



For some dread, faceless king,

My sons were taken away;

And all that’s precious dies for naught

To fill some distant grave.

They stole a widow’s mite to fight a foreign war;

An empty croft (farm), a heart of woe

And silence on the moor.

[tallerlacuba]

Nobody wins a war

[tallerlacuba]

Another Day In Iraq

© By Anonymous


For Now

Be still.
There are no sounds.
Not anymore.
Not after the grizzly stench of bombings
that lay before the dinner table.
The sounds of trumpeting voices still
echo inside the gates of
every child's mind.

Noises abruptly halt the laughter
and smiles of the city.
Yet they've stopped.

For now.
No more thundering explosions
abuse the hearts of the innocent.

For now.
The children come back out.
In fear of the atomic packages that
fell from the stars.
The gift of 'democracy' tightly laced
in ammunition.

A mother's worried cries dress
the streets in a somber outfit of tears.
She searches for her lost young.
Her mind racing, her stomach
churning, burning with the
acids of dread and panic.

Her milk is drying, dissipating
from the absence of a tender child.
She breaks,
like a China doll that
fell from the careless hands
of a militant.

Her demeanor
represents the widespread
poverned nation
in which she lives.

Breathing,
In
Out
The cluttered, stifled air
of a chemical soup.

She drops.
Falling upward
Towards the only
Peace she can find.

Scrambling like a cockroach
in the light.
She searches for a morsel
of humanity to feed
the lost.

The noises return,
along with the familiar smell
of burning metal.

Another day in Iraq.

[tallerlacuba]

In Flanders fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Dr. John McCrae (1872-1918)

[Showann]

War

Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone
Man has created death. 

[tallerlacuba]

WAR IN MY CITY.

Why?
Why?

Eyes full with fire,
hands full of weapons,
minds full of vicio,
parks full with death.

I want to fly,
to win this random game,
to leave this unconscious world,
because the sense is not the same one.

The hands that touched me,
the eyes that saw me,
people who loved me,
everything finished this day.

You remember the eyes full with love,
the hands full with caresses,
the minds with reason,
the parks in that you played.

Everything finished.

[tallerlacuba]

GOOD-BYE SPRING.

And the lady spring,
came near and greeted,
she told me, "I leave",
I am no longer anymore.

Because the sky is no longer blue,
the flowers and the plants are no longer,
the life leaves the water,
the life leaves.

A thousand needles have nailed me,
your planet faints,
not more siren cries,
not more dreams with chimeras,

Awake.

The sky is no longer blue,
the flowers dying falls,
on the cold velvet,
of all the cities.

Awake.

[tallerlacuba]

OUTSIDE.

I spend the life,
looking trough,
the glass that catches me,
and takes me away from you.

This morning I was not able anymore,
to be caught without being able to fly,
the skies blue I intent to furrow,
my tied hands.

To break the glass that catches me?
that the wings of the freedom,
take me flying toward you,
with a sun that illuminates me the life.

I spend the life,
thrown in the floor,
and I don´t know,I don´t know,
if some day I will get up.

This morning I no longer could more,
I took the heart, a thousand stars,
and of that prison,
a door opened up.

The city...
Caught once again,
my soul smiled,
iron forest.

So strange.

[tallerlacuba]

20 YEARS.

Already two decades,
and anything happen,
this curtain doesn't still fall,
and it doesn't allow me to see.

No.

The life passes so quickly,
and when the flower defoliates,
you look back,
there is no time.

No.

The friends and the streets,
they are not the same of yesterday,
they are the clouds that had passed by,
and that change so quickly.

The life is so fast,
and when the flower defoliates,
a good-bye is said to the things,
it is said that everything finished.

Good-bye my purple forest.

[tallerlacuba]

SAD CITY.

In this city,
there is no longer clarity,
the soul is lost,
a failed illusion.

The history disappears,
just single shades of the city,
pass throug the door,
and that is all you will see.

The history disappears,
of people who leaves,
and in the soul it doesn't finish,
the love of the one who misses you.

Good-bye noone´s city,
good-bye strange city,
in you she dies,
and you just deceive.

[tallerlacuba]

LONELY TRAVELER.

Alone in a gray world,
in the thresholds of your love,
waiting for your signal,
a "go on" and to advance.

I want to escape from everything except from you,
and your looking so strange and subtle,
my needing indicates me to take the initiative,
and you take away each instant of my life.

Screaming on the soft ones,
spider's webs of my childhood,
I request the special password,
to be able to figure out your mystery.

To enter into your heart,
and break my dreams,
break all illusion,
create new moments.

[tallerlacuba]

I LOOK TO THE SKY.

I look to the sky and there is no longer anything,
accustomed to die I was,
and with a warm sun, a blue sky,
my thought, mon amour disintegrates.

I sustain myself of myself,
for not falling again in the abyss,
I have already been in the hell,
I know it and it is sometimes so tender.

I had maybe gotten acostumed,
to know that everything had finished,
and it is simple so the existence,
an organism unhinged apparently.

But I still continue here,
I look to the sky, there is nothing there,
It was the cold passages of my hell,
I don't know if now it is warm or I have the habit to live this way.

[Showann]

Once upon a time there was a good wolf
Who was attacked by the sheeps
And there was also a bad prince
A beautiful wish and a honest pirate