Todays poem is from Selected Poetry by Herbert Read, 1892-1968, poet and art critic, proclaimed himself an anarchist but went on to accept a Knighthood. He is reported to have said that he only accepted it under pressure from his wife!
War And Peace.
The kind of war is chang'd: the crusade heart
out-shattered: flesh a stain on broken earth
and death an unresisted rain.
The horror loos'd all honour is lost.
Peace has pride and passion: but no evil
to equal the indignity of war, whose ringing anvil
wins only anguish. The weighted hammer
breaks the stretch'd tendons at the wrist
And leaves the soul a twisted nail
tearing the flesh that still would live
and give to words the brutal edge of truth.
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