Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PICKING SKULLS AT VERDUN, by VINCENT GODFREY BURNS



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PICKING SKULLS AT VERDUN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A respectable, exceedingly proper paper reports
Last Line: Who always see the folly when it is too late!
Subject(s): Cruelty; Death; Skulls; Soldiers; Veterans Day; War; World War I; Dead, The; First World War


A respectable, exceedingly proper paper reports
With hands in the air and squeamish face and "Horrors!"
That folk on the fields of Verdun
Are raking the earth for skulls ten years decayed
To take them home for souvenirs!

A tragedy! says the good editor,
That people should be so cruel, so callous,
As to dig up out of clay the erstwhile heads
Of perished soldier-boys,
Heads that have been offered upon the holy altar of war
And ought to be left in peace!

Well, skulls are as thick as daisies
Over that little hill in France
Where a million men were slain,
Dead Man's Hill they call it,
Where for four years
Murders were made by the wholesale!

And then the thick-skulled newspaper man
Lets out his raucous squawk at this late date
To protect impersonal skulls
That cannot know nor feel forevermore!
He who helped to put these dead boys there,
Who with his jingo cries for war
And his blind glorification of national might
Paved way for the havoc of the battle!
Now he is chagrined to think
That a few skulls have been brought to light,
Better to let them rest beneath the all-forgiving earth
Than resurrect old sins, old shames, old horrors!

Ah! what pitiful irony!
The guns that made skulls of tousled heads,
The gas that brought to happy hearts decay,
The maelstrom that made mincemeat of a continent,
These are the blunders of these blind old men
Who always see the folly when it is too late!





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