Eddie+O.



**//__Poems__//**
Memorial day for the war dead. Add now the grief of all your losses to their grief, even of a woman that has left you. Mix sorrow with sorrow, like time-saving history, which stacks holiday and sacrifice and mourning on one day for easy, convenient memory.
 * 1.** **Memorial Day For The War Dead by Yehuda Amichai**

Oh, sweet world soaked, like bread, in sweet milk for the terrible toothless God. "Behind all this some great happiness is hiding." No use to weep inside and to scream outside. Behind all this perhaps some great happiness is hiding.

Memorial day. Bitter salt is dressed up as a little girl with flowers. The streets are cordoned off with ropes, for the marching together of the living and the dead. Children with a grief not their own march slowly, like stepping over broken glass.

The flautist's mouth will stay like that for many days. A dead soldier swims above little heads with the swimming movements of the dead, with the ancient error the dead have about the place of the living water.

A flag loses contact with reality and flies off. A shopwindow is decorated with dresses of beautiful women, in blue and white. And everything in three languages: Hebrew, Arabic, and Death.

A great and royal animal is dying all through the night under the jasmine tree with a constant stare at the world.

A man whose son died in the war walks in the street like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.

"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."

Link: [|http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/yehuda_amichai/poems/70.html]

**Yehuda Amichai's Higher Purpose**

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots [|But limped on, blood-shod.]All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
 * 2.** **Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen**

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

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.

Link: [|http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/wilfred_owen/poems/15889]

**Wilfred Owen's Higher Purpose**

In anguish we uplift A new [|unhallowed] song: The race is to the swift; The battle to the strong.
 * 3. ** **War Song ****by ****John Davidson **

Of old it was ordained That we, in packs like curs, Some thirty million trained And licensed murderers,

In crime should live and act, If cunning folk say sooth Who flay the naked fact And carve the heart of truth.

[|The rulers cry aloud] , "We cannot cancel war, The end and bloody shroud Of wrongs the worst abhor, And order's swaddling band: Know that relentless strife Remains by sea and land The holiest law of life. From fear in every guise, From sloth, from lust of pelf, By war's great sacrifice The world redeems itself. War is the source, the theme Of art; the goal, the bent And brilliant academe Of noble sentiment; The augury, the dawn Of golden times of grace; The true catholicon, And blood-bath of the race."

We thirty million trained And licensed murderers, Like zanies rigged, and chained By drill and scourge and curse In shackles of despair We know not how to break -- What do we victims care For art, what interest take In things unseen, unheard? Some diplomat no doubt Will launch a heedless word, And lurking war leap out!

We spell-bound armies then, Huge brutes in dumb distress, Machines compact of men Who once had consciences, Must trample harvests down -- Vineyard, and corn and oil; Dismantle town by town, Hamlet and homestead spoil On each appointed path, Till lust of havoc light A blood-red blaze of wrath In every frenzied sight.

In many a mountain pass, Or meadow green and fresh, Mass shall encounter mass Of shuddering human flesh; Opposing ordnance roar Across the swaths of slain, And blood in torrents pour In vain -- always in vain, For war breeds war again!

The shameful dream is past, The subtle maze untrod : We recognize at last That war is not of God.

Link: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/john_davidson/poems/6275.html

**John Davidson's Higher Purpose**

 __//**The Big Wrap Up**//__