This week: Wilfred Owen Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady
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*** warning poems contain war and and death imagery. Wilfred Owen was a First Worls War poet ***
The End
by Wilfred Owen
After the blast of lightning from the east,
The flourish of loud clouds, the Chariot throne,
After the drums of time have rolled and ceased
And from the bronze west long retreat is blown,
Shall Life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul, all tears assuage?
Or fill these void veins full again with youth
And wash with an immortal water age?
When I do ask white Age, he saith not so, --
"My head hangs weighed with snow."
And when I hearken to the Earth she saith
My fiery heart sinks aching. It is death.
Mine ancient scars shall not be glorified
Nor my titanic tears the seas be dried."
Winter Song
by Wilfred Owen
The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,
And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed
Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,
And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,
Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.
From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.
On March 18, 1893 near Oswestry, Shropshire, Thomas and his wife Susan Owen welcomed their first child Wilfred Owen into the world. Thomas worked on the railway and the family lived in a house owned by his grandfather. Owen had three younger siblings, Mary, Harold and Colin. The family didn't have much and when Owen's grandfather passed away they were forced to move out of their home. They spent the next several years moving while his father worked different jobs. The family finally moved in with Thomas' parents. Owen was educated at Birkenhead Institute in Liverpool, then at Shrewsbury Technical College. He worked as a pupil-teacher in hopes to get accepted into the University of London, but lack of money stopped him. Instead he took a teaching post in Bordeaux. He went on to a tutoring job in Pyrenees, when the First World War was declared.
Owen enlisted in October 1915. While fighting on the Somme he suffered a severe concussion and trench fever, he was transferred to Craiglockhart War Hospital to recover. Owen was eventually diagnosed with shell shock. While recovering at the Hospital Owen met Siegfried Sassoon, who read his poems and made suggestions on improvements, also offering encouragement. After his recovery he was posted back in France. The poetry Owen wrote about the war showed deep compassion with the grim realism of war and death. Most notably his poems "Anthem for Doomed Youth," "Dulce Et Decorum Est."
Wilfred Owen was killed in action on the Sombre Canal on November 4, 1918 one week before the war ended. Almost all of Owen's poetry was published posthumously: Poems in 1920,The Poems of Wilfred Owen in 1931,The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen in 1963,The Complete Poems and Fragments in 1983. On November 11, 1985, Owen and 15 other Great War poets were commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner.
Spring Offensive
by Wilfred Owen
Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.
Hour after hour they ponder the warm field --
And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.
Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste --
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun, --
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.
So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.
Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.
But what say such as from existence' brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames --
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder --
Why speak they not of comrades that went under?
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
Relax By The Sea
What was I to do, muddy prints were everywhere!
It happened while I was finding something to wear.
In that short time, mud was tracked inside
I asked who had done this, every one of them lied.
Well, I have to confess, they didn’t exactly lie,
But not one would look me in the eye.
I looked in the yard; and had to stifle a scream,
The flowers in my garden lay flat, lit by a lone sunbeam.
Someone, that ‘CULPRIT’, had trampled them for fun
When I find out who it was, they had better cut and run
There would be no more laughter, nor time to play outside
Once I found them, I’d surely tan their hide
Then Jimmy came in and asked what was the matter?
He asked it with a smile, while holding back his laughter.
“What’s the matter? I’ll show you, my child!”
He didn’t flinch one bit, just sat back and smiled.
It’s not easy being single, raising a son all alone,
Having a dog around the house, often made me groan.
Pumpkin had tracked in mud, wet paw tracks on the floor,
Jimmy and his dog, had been in the water down at the shore.
We were on vacation, our first time alone,
We’d come to the ocean, not too far from home.
I’d planned on having a garden, just to keep me busy,
So far, all I’d done, was have a little tizzy.
I sighed, looked around, and realized all was good,
Nothing we couldn’t replace, including my bad mood.
I sat back and smiled, Jimmy grinned at me,
Knew this was what we needed, to relax by the sea.
Jim Dorrell
5/19/22
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Poetry: June 15, 2022 Issue [#11412]
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