Showing posts with label War and Peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War and Peace. Show all posts

Saturday 27 April 2013

War And Peace.


       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.

ann arky's home.