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Memorial Day

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  • Poem

    Portrait from the Infantry

    By Alan Dugan
    He smelled bad and was red-eyed with the miseries
    of being scared while sleepless when he said
    this: “I want a private woman, peace and quiet,
    and some green stuff in my pocket. Fuck
    the rest.” Pity the underwear and socks,
    long burnt, of an...
  • Poem

    The Death of a Soldier

    By Wallace Stevens
    Life contracts and death is expected,
    As in a season of autumn.
    The soldier falls.
     
    He does not become a three-days personage,
    Imposing his separation,
    Calling for pomp.
     
    Death is absolute and without memorial,
    As in a season of autumn,
    When the wind stops,
     
    When the wind stops and,...
  • Poem

    Memorial Day

    By Reginald Gibbons
    A last formality is
    running late, as a life can't,
    this hot day. The final
    ethereal glow of
    the sun seems to come up from
    underfoot in this parkland
    of polysyllabic death.
     
    These deep graves, two this time,
    neatly cut into the earth,
    await the arrivals,
    and two adjacent heaps...
  • Poem

    Facing It

    By Yusef Komunyakaa
    My black face fades,   
    hiding inside the black granite.   
    I said I wouldn't  
    dammit: No tears.   
    I'm stone. I'm flesh.   
    My clouded reflection eyes me   
    like a bird of prey, the profile of night   
    slanted against morning. I turn   
    this way—the stone lets me go.   
    I turn that way—I'm...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    The Soldier

    By Rupert Brooke
    If I should die, think only this of me:
          That there’s some corner of a foreign field
    That is for ever England. There shall be
          In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
    A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
          Gave, once, her flowers...
  • Poem

    For a War Memorial

    By G. K. Chesterton
    The hucksters haggle in the mart
    The cars and carts go by;
    Senates and schools go droning on;
    For dead things cannot die.

    A storm stooped on the place of tombs
    With bolts to blast and rive;
    But these be names of many men
    The lightning found...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    The Dead

    By Rupert Brooke
    Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
          There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,
          But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
    These laid the world away; poured out the red
    Sweet wine of youth;...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Peace

    By Rupert Brooke
    Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,
          And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping!
    With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
          To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
    Glad from a world...
  • Article

    World War I: Poetry by Year

    By The Editors
    From poems written in the trenches to elegies for the dead, these poems, organized chronologically, commemorate World War I.
    Image of soldiers running over trenches
  • Poem

    The Dead

    By Rupert Brooke
    These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
          Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
    The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
          And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
    These had seen movement, and heard music;...
  • Poem

    Safety

    By Rupert Brooke
    Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
          He who has found our hid security,
    Assured in the dark tides of the world that rest,
          And heard our word, ‘Who is so safe as we?’
    We have found safety...
  • Poem

    The Cenotaph

    By Charlotte Mew
    Not yet will those measureless fields be green again
    Where only yesterday the wild sweet blood of wonderful youth was shed;
    There is a grave whose earth must hold too long, too deep a stain,
    Though for ever over it...
  • Poem

    The End and the Beginning

    By Wisława Szymborska
    Translated By Joanna Trzeciak
    After every war
    someone has to clean up.
    Things won’t
    straighten themselves up, after all.

    Someone has to push the rubble
    to the side of the road,
    so the corpse-filled wagons
    can pass.

    Someone has to get mired
    in scum and ashes,
    sofa springs,
    splintered glass,
    and bloody rags.

    Someone has to drag...
  • Poem

    Memorial Day

    By Gregory Orr
    1
    After our march from the Hudson to the top
    of Cemetery Hill, we Boy Scouts proudly endured
    the sermons and hot sun while Girl Scouts
    lolled among graves in the maple shade.
    When members of the veterans’ honor guard
    aimed their bone-white rifles skyward and...
  • Poem

    The City's Oldest Known Survivor of the Great War

    By James Doyle
    marches in uniform down the traffic stripe
    at the center of the street, counts time
    to the unseen web that has rearranged
    the air around him, his left hand
    stiff as a leather strap along his side,
    the other saluting right through the decades
    as if...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    The Performance

    By James L. Dickey
    The last time I saw Donald Armstrong   
    He was staggering oddly off into the sun,   
    Going down, off the Philippine Islands.   
    I let my shovel fall, and put that hand
    Above my eyes, and moved some way to one side
    That his body might pass...
  • Poem

    Barbara Frietchie

    By John Greenleaf Whittier
    Up from the meadows rich with corn,
    Clear in the cool September morn,

    The clustered spires of Frederick stand
    Green-walled by the hills of Maryland.

    Round about them orchards sweep,
    Apple- and peach-tree fruited deep,

    Fair as a garden of the Lord
    To the eyes of the...
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