Memorial Day....

[Green_Manelishi]

There is "another" version of this that includes the text give them their meaning. Give them an end to the war and true peace. Give them a victory that ends the war and a peace afterward. following "give them their meaning". In any case, it's a powerful poem.


The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could
but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished
no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours: they are yours,
they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.


by Archibald MacLeish,
1892-1982, American Poet

 

[agilis]

Charles Sorley might have said to MacLeish "They say nothing. You only imagine". Of course, Sorley was killed in the trenches early in WWI, and knew he would die from the first. MacLeish survived his brief stint in the ambulance corp and field artillery. Extremely priviliged man that he was, (Yale, Skull and Bones, etc) he went on to serve as a propaganda officer during WW2.

I have only one other poem to share:

There died a myriad,
and of the best, among them,
For an old bit$h gone in the teeth,
for a botched civilization

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues
For a few thousand battered books.

Ezra Pound

 

[Green_Manelishi]

Charles Sorley might have said to MacLeish "They say nothing. You only imagine". Of course, Sorley was killed in the trenches early in WWI, and knew he would die from the first. MacLeish survived his brief stint in the ambulance corp and field artillery. Extremely priviliged man that he was, (Yale, Skull and Bones, etc) he went on to serve as a propaganda officer during WW2.

Are you imagining Sorley might have said that to MacLeish? If I was to die in service of my country I think MacLeish words would be exactly what I'd say.

It's a shame Sorley was killed but he does not strike me as non-priviledged.