Lest We Forget.
The sons of our sons will marvel,
Paging the textbook:
“1914 … 1917 … 1919 …
How did they live? The poor devils!”
Children of a new age will read of battles,
Will learn the names of orators and generals,
The numbers of the killed,
And the dates.
They will not know how sweetly roses smelled above the trenches,
How martins chirped blithely between the cannon salvos,
How beautiful in those years was Life.
Never, never did the sun laugh so brightly
As above a sacked town,
When people, crawling out of their cellars,
Wondered: is there still a sun?
Violent speeches thundered,
Strong armies perished,
But the soldiers learned what the scent of snowdrops is like
An hour before the attack.
People were led at dawn to be shot …
But they alone learned what an April morning can be.
The cupolas gleamed in the slanting rays,
And the wind pleaded: Wait! A minute! Another minute!
Kissing, they could not tear themselves from the mournful mouth,
And they could not unclasp the hands so tightly joined.
Love meant: I shall die! I shall die!
Love meant: Burn, fire, in the wind!
Love meant: O where are you, where?
They love as people can love only here, upon this rebellious and
tender star.
In those years there were no orchards golden with fruit,
But only fleeting bloom, only a doomed May.
In those years there was no calling: “So long!”
But only a brief, reverberant “Farewell!”
Read about us and marvel!
You did not live in our time — be sorry!
We were guests of the earth for one evening only.
We loved, we destroyed, we lived in the hour of our death.
But overhead stood the eternal stars,
And under them we begot you.
In your eyes our longing still burns,
In your words our revolt reverberates yet
Far into the night, and into the ages, the ages, we have scattered
The sparks of our extinguished life.
Ilya Ehrenburg 1919.
- Joe Public
November 11, 2014 at 10:29 am -
I can but remind your many readers of the Kohima Epitaph:
“When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today” - Mudplugger
November 11, 2014 at 10:33 am -
We will remember them.
- Jim Bates
November 11, 2014 at 10:41 am -
A heartfelt thank you Anna. I still think of the Granddad I never knew and my Grandma and Mother and the lives they had without him.
- Moor Larkin
November 11, 2014 at 12:23 pm -
‘Jack fell as he’d have wished,’ the Mother said,
And folded up the letter that she’d read.
‘The Colonel writes so nicely.’ Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
She half looked up. ‘We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.’ Then her face was bowed.Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He’d told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.He thought how ‘Jack’, cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he’d tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.Hero by Wilfred Owen
- Dioclese
November 11, 2014 at 1:37 pm -
And then it all gets spoilt by a Tesco Remembrance Pizza. Appalling taste – probably in more ways than one.
http://is-a-cunt.com/2014/11/tesco-remembrance-pizza/
- GildasTheMonk
November 11, 2014 at 4:16 pm -
Well done, Boss
- Ancient+Tattered Airman
November 11, 2014 at 7:06 pm -
A strange taste, Anna. Ehrenburg doesn’t move me at all. Odd dates and references in his piece. Wilfred Owen is more my mark as he served and experienced the horrors.
- Moor Larkin
November 12, 2014 at 5:37 pm -
I found the poem interesting enough to look him up and no doubt his poetry cannot possibly work as well in translation from the original Russian but I did find a plaintive charm about it, and I guess that was the reason I felt compelled to fin out who he were, for I had never heard of him before.
- Moor Larkin
- Pete
November 11, 2014 at 8:08 pm -
THe dates go up to 1919, and could have gone far beyond that date, because Ehrenburg was Russian, and although for Russians the First World War actually ended in 1917, it segued seamlessly into the even ghastlier Russian Civil War, then the mass killings of Russians by their own government through the 1930s, then World War Two in which the USSR as a whole lost over 20 million people.
In the mean time Ehrenburg also experienced the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. And being a Russian Jew, he also had experience of pogroms.
So I think he experienced quite enough horrors to qualify him as a war poet.
- Mike
November 11, 2014 at 9:10 pm -
and that nice Ilya said that it was OK for Russian soldiers to rape German women as they advanced into Germany in 1944-5, quelle horreur
- Moor Larkin
November 12, 2014 at 5:40 pm -
Also credited as having originally coined the number “Six Million” in relation to the Holocaust I did read. I wonder if that is true.
- Moor Larkin
- Mike
- Frankie
November 11, 2014 at 10:13 pm -
For once, I think the country has really gone out of its way to remember these fine young men and women who gave their lives in such dreadful numbers.
Well done Anna.
- Engineer
November 11, 2014 at 10:20 pm -
“It’s a free country, innit!” – a line often thrown out without much thought.
I’ve been reflecting a bit today on the nature of the country’s freedom, and how tenuous it has been at times – maybe still is. I’ve also been reflecting on the terrible price of keeping that freedom.
I’m not at all sure that freedom should be taken for granted. It should be treated as the precious and costly gift that it is, and to honour the memory of those that have fallen to defend it, we should work hard to maintain it.
- Cascadian
November 12, 2014 at 12:38 am -
Lest we forget
http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/491331/CONDON,%20JOHN
I hope he had a chance to smell the roses, he had very little chance to anything else in his lifetime.
- Ms Mildred
November 12, 2014 at 11:23 am -
The amazing response from people of all ages to that sea of red ceramic poppies is truly amazing and wonderful. A sign of how sentimental we have become. I hope all this collective sentiment can lead us away from so much involvement in far off wars. However, when the next provocation occures, I have little hope of us holding back from involvement with USA in more wars in the future. All those brave or cowardly boys who ‘went over the top’ or got fragmented to nothing…RIP.
- John Ward
November 13, 2014 at 9:12 pm -
The yesterday they gave for today was a very poor exchange. I didn’t get where I am today without knowing that yesterday was better.
Bon voyage Raccoonxx
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