On this Armistice Day (yes, I'm old enough to remember when that's what we called it), I honor and give thanks for every man and woman who has served this country in the military. I thank them for their patriotism, their courage, and their sacrifice. I pray for them in danger, terror, injured bodies, and haunted dreams. I vote for their pay, their arming, their care, and their veteran benefits. I offer prayers for their safety and their healing, their peace of mind and soul, their safe return, their joy in reuniting with family and loved ones. I am proud of them for all their virtues and their sense of duty.
None of this makes war any less than hell. And so I grieve. In an e-mail today to my ex I wrote this:
Well, here we are: Armistice Day, Veterans Day, X's birthday.
This means I am something of a weepy mess again.
Happens regularly this time of year and Decoration Day (Memorial Day), and sometimes in between. I want to salute them all as heroes and I want to hold them all and rock them in my arms, knowing that if they went into battle they will never be the same. And I mist up. Sometimes I break down into great sobs.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing 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,
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.
---Wilfrid Owen
Grandmère Mimi has a lovely post and prayer for Veterans' Day at Wounded Bird.
Thanks to jcf for posting Owen's poem in comments at OCICBW.
--the BB
2 comments:
And thank you for reminding me he (?) had done so.
I had it memorized, at one point, but I lost the book page, which had come out of the pb anthology it was in, with which I refreshed myself; replacing it's on my "to do" list. Reciting it helps me to run through the anger and come out less burnt.
Poetry helps us live and often to live better.
Post a Comment