Society and the World

“I will not kiss your f.ing flag”

next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth

take it from me kiddo believe me my country, ’tis of you, land of the Cluett Shirt Boston Garter and Spearmint Girl With The Wrigley Eyes (of you land of the Arrow Ide and Earl & Wilson Collars) of you i sing: land of Abraham Lincoln and Lydia land above all of Just Add Hot Water And from every B.V.D. let freedom ring amen.

take it from me kiddo believe me my country, ’tis of you, land of the Cluett Shirt Boston Garter and Spearmint Girl With The Wrigley Eyes (of you land of the Arrow Ide and Earl & Wilson Collars) of you i sing: land of Abraham Lincoln and Lydia land above all of Just Add Hot Water And from every B.V.D. let freedom ring amen.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet One perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it’s always just my luck to get

Red lips are not so red As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

What passing bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons.

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 desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Above all, this book is not concerned with Poetry, The subject of it is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. All a poet can do is warn. 1

If ever I said, in grief or pride, I tired of honest things, I lied.

We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

I am caught like a beast at bay. Somewhere are people, freedom, light, But all I hear is the baying of the pack, There is no way out for me.

I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field. 1

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot.

Upon the clothes behind the tenement, That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines, Linking each flat, but to each indifferent, Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

I should be proud to have my memory graced, but only if the monument be placed… here, where I endured three hundred hours in line before the implacable iron bars.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger’s wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place.

The only freedom the gods grant us Of our own free will to their sovereignty. Since only in the illusion of freedom

How should I know what I’ll be, I who don’t know what I am? Be what I think? But I think of being so many things! And there are so many who think of being the same thing that we can’t all be it! Genius? At this moment A hundred thousand brains are dreaming they’re geniuses like me, And it may be that history won’t remember even one, All their imagined conquests amounting to so much dung.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

But fare forward, voyagers.

The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses’ heels Over the paving.