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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SONG AND CRY OF A SOLDIER IN THE LINES, by ALBERT EDWARD CLEMENTS First Line: Sharpen the sky to flashes of flame Last Line: When a cross and dust mark where you fell? Subject(s): Death; Government; Social Protest; Soldiers; War; World War I; Dead, The; First World War | |||
ALBERT EDWARD CLEMENTS Sharpen the sky to flashes of flame Belching through bunches of dusty smoke. War is coming, and war is a game Where a king is a god, and a soldier's a joke To be played on fields of warm red blood Seething and spitting in heaving mud. My son is going, your son is going! March, boys, march, you're on your way to hell! John and Henry, what will you be knowing When a cross and dust mark where you fell? Fight, you slimy lipped idiots, for one buck a day! Bleed, kill, suffer, starve—and kiss the full breasted women stumbling before conquest. Spit at the little red faced kids crying on their mothers' revealing skirts, guffaw at their wailing for fathers. Heaven and Christ, what do they know about graves! Shouts, curses, tears, cheers; lightning shots streaking the crazy clouds; ripping flesh, groaning men; splintered homes; muddy, shell-torn gardens; Sagging skies spilling oozy, sticky rains as if blood were not greasy and wet enough. How many years have I been away? How many men have I killed today? We went over the top at eleven sharp, Through the shrapnel and dead, and the devil's harp Played a tune that was mad with blood and smoke, Played a tune that laughed when some brain broke! I've never been mad, but I'm going quick. The blood on my bayonet makes me sick, And the crunch of cold flesh as I stumble along Is a sound that hell would condemn as wrong. Powdered monarchs at home, feasting, dancing, laughing; velvet stomachs lined, fortified, tickled with rich food. Brains lined with solid wood. (What more could you expect?) Thousands, millions, ten thousand millions of white crosses stuck crooked, ghostlike, over worm eaten boxes; a sea of salty tears, an ocean of widows weeping. A world of sucking, wailing fatherless children; two worlds of fields blooming from muddy broken ground into scented flowers, Into lush crops. Anything that came out of the earth is good fertilizer; Man came out of the earth. How many men were killed today? Ten thousand will never again draw their pay! Ten thousand will never again see the sun. They were good soldiers and their work is done. Perhaps a red rose can tell the name of some dead soldier whose blood it bears. For quiet has come once again. After war the silence of a void, the song of a wind gone down. My son is going, your son is going! March, boys, march, you're on your way to hell! John and Henry, what will you be knowing When a cross and dust mark where you fell? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...D'ANNUNZIO by ERNEST HEMINGWAY 1915: THE TRENCHES by CONRAD AIKEN TO OUR PRESIDENT by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE HORSES by KATHARINE LEE BATES CHILDREN OF THE WAR by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE U-BOAT CREWS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE RED CROSS NURSE by KATHARINE LEE BATES WAR PROFITS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE UNCHANGEABLE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN GHOSTS OF CONQUEST by ALBERT EDWARD CLEMENTS SONNET TO THOSE WHO SEE BUT DARKLY by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |
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