[Donut]

For anybody here who is getting excited about war starting, who wants to kick ass, who believes it's "fun" to watch men die or who have confused the imminent war with some kind of PC 'shoot-em-up' I offer this poem from WWI by Wilfred Owen. It's not pretty!

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!-An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire of lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

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,
If you could hear , at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, 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.

[ 03-20-2003, 09:24 AM: Message edited by: Donut ]