Per the difficulty of writing poems protesting War. I agree. Damn hard. Most fail. Here's a poem by Nancy Cunard -- in the news recently because another biography has come out. I'd be interested in anyone's opinion as to whether it works -- that is whether it's a good poem about war overcoming the usual in some ways... I think it is.
To Eat, To-Day
They come without siren-song
Over the usual street of man’s middle day,
Come, unbelievably – abstract – beyond human vision –
Codicils, dashes along the great Maniac speech.
“Helmeted Nuremburg, nothing,” said the people of Barcelona,
The people of Spain – “Ya lo sabemos, we have suffered all.”
Gangrene of German cross, you sirs in the ether,
Sons of Romulus, Wotan – is the mark worth the bomb?
What was in it? Salt and a half-pint of olive,
Nothing else but the woman, she treasured it terribly,
Oil, for the day folks would come, refugees from Levante,
Maybe with greens . . . one round meal, but you killed her,
Killed four children outside, with the house, and the pregnant cat.
Heil, hand of Rome, you passed – and that is all.
I wonder – do you eat before you do these things,
Is it a cocktail or a pousse-café?
Are you sitting at mess now, saying, “visibility medium . . .
We got the port, or near it, with half-a-dozen,” I wonder –
Or highing it yet, on the home-run to Malorca,
Cold at 5000 up, cursing a jammed release . . .
“Give it ‘em, puta Madonna, here, over Areyns –
Per Bacco, it’s nearly two – bloody sandwich it’s made down there –
Aren’t we going to eat to-day, teniente? te-niente?”
Driver in the clouds fuming, fumbler unstrapping death.
You passed; hate traffics on; then the shadows fall.
On the simple earth
Five mouths less to feed to-night in Barcelona.
On the simple earth
Men tramping and raving on an edge of fear.
Another country arming, another and another behind it –
Europe’s nerve strung like catapult, the cataclysm roaring and
swelling . . .
But in Spain, no Perhaps, and To-morrow – in Spain, it is, Here.
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