2001-06-07 - 2:30 p.m.
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,
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.
-------Wilfred Owen, "Dulce Et Decorum Est"
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War poetry has always haunted me, if you can believe that. While I am most definitely not a pacifist, I am keenly aware that only a fool hopes for war, yet sometimes as a last resort it becomes the only means for resolution. Gruesome ... I have a hard time knowing that sometimes a person can be so committed to something .... not because they are willing to die for it, but because they are willing to KILL for it. And the effect of that willingness too often has not been thoroughly contemplated.
***********
Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the Battle-God, great, and his Kingdom -
A field where a thousand corpses lie.
Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.
-------Stephen Crane, "Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind"
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And thus I end up contemplating Keigan's philosophy of life, that there are basically three types of people: sheep, wolves, and shepherds. The shepherds hold the responsibility of defending the sheep from the wolves, and somewhere in that concept is something I find comforting. For the defense of self and of the helpless, I am more able to accept the violence of war and the fact that I spent fourteen years of my life training for it
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