For centuries we have lived in a war ravished world, a world where states preach war as noble, and dying for such noble events is a sacrifice that enhances the human spirit. Though the truth is well known to those who have been there and fought the battles, and the millions of civilians that have perished needlessly in savage brutality, the state still persists in this lie, this illusion, that to die for your country is a noble and honourable sacrifice. Patriotism is usually the banner under which war is given the stamp of legitimacy
Against the lies and deceptions of the state to sanitise and ennoble war there have been an army of poets, and others, who told the truth and said it like it is, state murder, pointless savagery and bloodshed in the name of the wealthy, powerful and privileged.
Among them my favourite probably is Siegfried Sassoon, however, this poem that captures the horror of war in one incident of the first world war by Wilfred Owen, probably stands out as a most graphic description of the horrors of the first world war. Sadly these horrors have grown in savagery as wars have moved with the technological advances in killing techniques.
DOLCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double. like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-keed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our back
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.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! - An ecstacy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a manin 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 we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick 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 deserate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
"Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mori" meaning: "Sweet and beautiful is to die for the fatherland" from a
verse of an ode by Horatio.
