British poet and soldier Wilfred Owen was killed
today in 1918, one week before the end of the Great War. He was 25 years old. He wrote this poem in November, 1917, the year before his death. He and his men came under enemy fire as he led them across the Sambre–Oise Canal in France.
Apologia pro Poemate Meo
I,
too, saw God through mud—
The mud that cracked on cheeks when
wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes
than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than
shakes a child.
Merry
it was to laugh there—
Where death becomes absurd and life
absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed
bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of
murder.
I,
too, have dropped off fear—
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed my spirit surging, light
and clear
Past the entanglement where hopes
lay strewn;
And
witnessed exultation—
Faces that used to curse me, scowl
for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of
oblation,
Seraphic for an hour; though they
were foul.
I
have made fellowships—
Untold of happy lovers in old song.
For love is not the binding of fair
lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look
and long,
By
Joy, whose ribbon slips—
But wound with war’s hard wire whose
stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm
that drips;
Knit in the welding of the
rifle-thong.
I
have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our
courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of
duty;
Found peace where shell-storms
spouted reddest spate.
Nevertheless,
except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark
of hell,
Whose world is but the trembling of
a flare,
And heaven but as the highway for a
shell,
You
shall not hear their mirth;
You shall not come to think them
well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.
November
1917
