Poetry Thursday - Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

      — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

      Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 

      Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

      And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

      Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

      The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

--Wilfred Owen (via)

As the Aftermath exhibition at Tate Britain is in its last days, I got myself over there at last. It was sad to see, but it's good to reflect on the senseless slaughter and devastation of that war, of all war - the hardship and grief and futility.

Barlach's floating angel was hung to make the most of its shadow (via)

The face of Barlach's "Floating One" (1927) was based on the features of Kathe Kollwitz, who lost her son in 1914. She designed a memorial showing the lonely grief of parents by putting each on a separate plinth, and she also produced a portfolio of prints, War, "one of the most powerful anti-war statements made in Germany" which focuses on the mothers and children.
 

Here in the London Borough of Islington the street-name signs now have lists of names attached - men living on that street who lost their lives in the 1914-18 conflict, and where and when they died ... some 10,000 in all.