In the Dark

As we approach Remembrance Sunday in a time of rising conflict, it seems apt to post the following poem written by Siegfried Sassoon, called the To the Warmongers:

I’m back again from hell
With loathsome thoughts to sell;
Secrets of death to tell;
And horrors from the abyss.
Young faces bleared with blood,
Sucked down into the mud,
You shall hear things like this,
Till the tormented slain
Crawl round and once again,
With limbs that twist awry
Moan out their brutish pain,
As for the fighters pass them by.
For you our battles shine
With triumph half-divine;
And the glory of the dead
Kindles in each proud eye.
But a curse is on my head,
That shall not be unsaid,
And the wounds in my heart are red,
For I have watched them die.

This entry was posted on November 6, 2023 at 3:15 pm and is filed under History, Poetry, Politics with tags Siegfried Sassoon, To The Warmongers, World War I. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.