"sassoon" poems
lily is bored
she is best ignored
she wants to be adored
and so she will by sun
that adorns her skin
she will wax and in
diamond and pearl
crazy colourings
grow
suddenly say
spread
oil on herself..
indicates
her impossible
pretty
(i will grumble
for
i am working..)
shoulder
and roll a stick
of marijuana
and sundry other
stuff
and that far from
enough and now
the sun has
gone..
behind a cloud
getting loud
fire is out..
lily wears a pout
where has the sun
where is her this
and where is that..
what is she reading
memoirs of a foxhunting man
(siegfried sassoon)
and goodbye to all that
by
robert graves
two great poets from the
first world war
she acclaims..
and carol ann duffy
she is flitting like
a happy
cabbage white
tween the three
waiting for
the light
on the one hand
the death of civilization
and carol´ s fun and dark
determination
between courage and courage
i cream her smooth opal covering
and push a cold mohitjo in her grip
she wonders how life changes
she lights up and picks at the ways
that divide and separate us
just let it rip she sighs..
what choice do we have anyhows
**** hit the fan
what to do..
Sep 22, 2018
Sep 22, 2018 at 9:31 AM UTC
Poulton Library and
Adele & I are here to
share with whoever
arrives some thoughts
concerning War and
Literature. Linda sets
us up with chairs and
table, and first here is
delightful surprise: Pat
who I taught thirty years
ago - there will be no
need for me to dig a
trench and put on a
jacket bullet-proof
with tin hat on my
head - Philip Larkin
Alun Lewis, Sassoon
and Wilfred Owen
give staunch support
to Jon Stallworthy's
World War One tome
Anthem for Doomed
Youth: Twelve Poets
but doomed not us
this century later.
(c) C J Heyworth June 2014
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 12:25 PM UTC
Some people write, but rarely read,
That seems to me most strange indeed,
They've read less than a hundred books,
Yet think they imitate the looks,
Of Sassoon, Cummings, Keats and Pound,
Or think they imitate the sound,
Of Lennon, Dylan, or Shakur,
And sometimes think they've offered more,
Than Chaucer, Wilde or Shakespeare could,
And claim they're more misunderstood,
Than even Salman Rushdie was,
Which really ticks me off because,
After having read such wondrous works,
A sense of failure always lurks,
Inside me whenever I write,
Yet they think they've done well tonight!
I hate them all! That's it - I've said it!
But they won't know until they've read it,
Which is quite doubtful, I'd attest,
Who'd read my work and skip the best?
Dec 29, 2015
Dec 29, 2015 at 1:55 AM UTC
by Siegfried Sassoon
1886-1967
In me past, present, future meet
To hold long-chiding conference.
My lusts usurp the present tense
And strangle Reason in his seat.
My love leaps through the future’s fence
To dance with dream-enfranchised feet.
In me the cave-man clasps the seer,
And garlanded Apollo goes
Chanting to Abraham’s deaf ear.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
Look in my heart, kind friends, and tremble,
Since there your elements assemble.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 2:17 PM UTC
The Last Doughboy
went marching home
mustered up to heaven
to rest in perfect peace
never went over the top
when he was over there
drove an ambulance to save
the last dying bits of humanity
excavated from the craters
reeking with mud and blood
the turgid stench
of blessed death
wafts through the
muddled labyrinth
a ghastly kingdom
of rats and men
intractable mazes
of hate, hope and waste
led by inept generals
vainglorious politicians
promising triumphant victory
while begging disastrous defeat
bold shouts of advance
lead to routed retreats
global trench warfare
the sweet earthen coffins
empathy's last gasp
compassion's last stand
gurgling lungs
gagging on gas
imploding on
clotting blood
liquid ammonia
sears sensitive retinas
wafting flash of fire
burns eyes forever shut
concussive bursts
bludgeon eardrums
ripped bodies of friends
splayed onto comrades
the macabre rouge
a terrible war paint
liberally applied
with stunning result
by the industrial rattle
of cantankerous Gatlings
better minds thought it
the war to end all wars
the horrific scenes of waste
the pleading lips of starved children
the last Doughboy saw it all
a lucky Johnny who marched home
he thought the horror of WWI
would be enough to end all wars
yet all is not quiet
on the western front
Johnny's still got lots
of gruesome guns
distressed humanity
remains very busy
carting away human rubble
from our apocalyptic trenches
go to your reward
valiant Doughboy
*"leave us citizens
of death's gray land,
drawing no dividend
from time's tomorrows."
Siegfried Sassoon*
Dedicated to
Frank Buckles
(February 1, 1901 – February 27, 2011)
Godspeed Beloved
Oakland
3/1/11
jbm
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 9:11 AM UTC
In Memory of Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)
Liberte¢, egalite¢, fraternite¢ -
you put your courage where your pen was
and poetry bloomed in Flanders Field
alongside the poppies.
With Owen and Sassoon, you rescued
the soldier-poet from antiquity
and wrought from mud and blood
the words that gave the lie to
The War to End All Wars.
You fell just as the race was nearly run
and France wept copiously to lose a favourite son.
Translation - a flawed art,
but perhaps no more flawed
than any art or, indeed,
any science.
Was it Frost that said:
“What is lost in translation is the poetry”?
Any smith learns the limitations of his materials
yet still he pushes them to breaking point.
Translator of the heart,
you took us to the Zone
where the sacred was profane
and the heavenly mundane.
Only the poet dares to look down
as Christ “ascends beyond the aviators”
because the poet knows that
life is a found object
and in any language the greatest gift
is the silence between the words.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 3:40 AM UTC
At Wilfred Owen’s Grave
by Michael R. Burch
A week before the Armistice, you died.
They did not keep your heart like Livingstone’s,
then plant your bones near Shakespeare’s. So you lie
between two privates, sacrificed like Christ
to politics, your poetry unknown
except for that brief flurry’s: thirteen months
with Gaukroger beside you in the trench,
dismembered, as you babbled, as the stench
of gangrene filled your nostrils, till you clenched
your broken heart together and the fist
began to pulse with life, so close to death.
Or was it at Craiglockhart, in the care
of “ergotherapists” that you sensed life
is only in the work, and made despair
a thing that Yeats despised, but also breath,
a mouthful’s merest air, inspired less
than wrested from you, and which we confess
we only vaguely breathe: the troubled air
that even Sassoon failed to share, because
a man in pieces is not healed by gauze,
and breath’s transparent, unless we believe
the words are true despite their lack of weight
and float to us like chlorine—scalding eyes,
and lungs, and hearts. Your words revealed the fate
of boys who retched up life here, gagged on lies.
Published by The Chariton Review, The Neovictorian/Cochlea, Rogue Scholars, Romantics Quarterly, Mindful of Poetry, Famous Poets and Poems, Poetry Life & Times, Other Voices International
Keywords/Tags: Wilfred, Owen, war, poem, trench, warfare, chlorine, gas, gangrene, armistice, ergotherapists, Craiglockhart, Sassoon, Yeats, honor, lies, gag, gagged, gagging, death, grave, funeral, elegy, eulogy, tribute, World War I
Mar 19, 2020
Mar 19, 2020 at 3:42 AM UTC
Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]
“Anglo-Saxon Students Would Not Like to Be Taught by a Jew”
cited in
-Stanley Kunitz Lyrics, Songs, and Albums | Genius
To the Privileged Youth of Columbia University:
As a child of situational poverty
I am so grateful for all my Jewish teachers
Including
Moses
Joshua
Jeremiah
Samuel
David
Solomon
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Saint Peter and the others in The Twelve
Saint Paul
Elie Weisel
Chaim Potok
Herman Wouk
Leon Uris
Franz Kafka
Leonard Cohen
Anne Frank
Bernard Malamud
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Osip Mandelstam
Saul Bellow
Isaac Asimov
Woody Allen
Mel Brooks
Edna Ferber
Yip Harburg
George Cukor
Mel Brooks
Oscar Hammerstein
Alan Lerner
Carl Reiner
Rod Serling
Franz Werfel
Alan Arkin
Claire Bloom
Leonard Nimoy
Chaim Topol
Ed Asner
Mel Brooks
Peter Falk
Werner Klemperer
Jack Klugman
Walter Matthau
Tony Randall
Mel Torme
John Banner
Kirk Douglas
Lorne Greene
Eli Wallach
Sam Wanamaker
Morey Amsterdam
Leo Genn
Otto Preminger
Jack Benny
Leslie Howard
Ernst Lubitsch
Cecil B. DeMille
Mortimer Adler
Allen Bloom
Harold Bloom
Irving Berlin
Boris Pasternak
Emil Ludwig
Eric Wolfgang Korngold
Elmer Bernstein
Max Steiner
George Gershwin
Dimitri Tiomkin
Samuel Fuller
Alexander Korda
Zoltan Korda
Emeric Pressburger
Erich von Stroheim
Billy Wilder
William Wyler
Fred Zinnemann
J. J. Abrams
Peter Bogdanovich
Michael Curtiz
Stanley Donen
Stanley Kramer
Howard Caine
Leon Askin
Robert Clary
Dinah Shore
Stephen Sondheim
Volodymyr Zelinsky
Simon Schama
Louise Gluck
Siegfried Sassoon
Isaac Rosenberg
Joseph Brodsky
Rob Morrow
Vasily Grossman
Stanley Kubrick
Viktor Frankl
And more, so many more, a cloud of witnesses
Whose names are written in gold on a scroll in Heaven
But somehow, in this world of beauty and truth
And humanity’s aspirations to the good
All you have found are bullhorns, trash fires, chants
Clinched fists, obscenities, lies, and shrieking hate
Apr 19, 2024
Apr 19, 2024 at 12:12 PM UTC
God be grateful for the poets sat within the trenches.
In trepidation sitting on the grounds so shallow.
Nowhere be there animals grazing in these fields.
These fields all full up with war.
For they left poetic memoirs of days gone by.
Days when many died.
There was no paradise awaiting.
Swirling smoke and cannon fodder.
Wrapped beneath the sullen moon.
Sassoon, Owen and Hodgson.
Poets give feeling like none could ever do.
Walking down the hillside.
In England, just a pleasant walk.
This was no place for summer day strolls.
The dragons fire their fluency in a language all men understood.
Enthusiastic majors told these boys that killed or be killed.
Powerful war cradle spoke out loud.
The cradle where the dead lads slept.
The scarlet crippled carpet lined with uncomprehending eyes.
The sun still shone in all her beauty.
But in their eyes the world was black.
God pray bless the poets in all the wars before and now.
To all war ridden poets.
A smile, an acknowledgement and most of all a heart bound bow!
(C) Livvi
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 5:19 PM UTC