WWII Poetry

Here are some WWII poems that were found in Poetry of The World Wars ed. Michael Foss pub. 1990. If I sent you here to get WWII poems, these are it. You should read them, print them off and bring them to class on Friday.

Lincoln Kerstein
Gripe

Who is a friend? Who is a foe?
No answer’s absolutely clear
But every sign intends to show
Friends are up Front; foes To the Rear.
Our own troops, forward – limp or stiff
At every shell that they sense shot –
Sorta react like we would if
We were Up with them. We are not.
Safe back, I’ll curse my colonel’s name
Whose whimsy aggravates my life;
Griping’s an intellectual game
Absolving me from guilt or strife.
I’ll not desert my desk secure
No cede it to some combat man
Whose ruggeder nature shall endure
A larger love, a shorter span.

Yet should one wander six miles west
Where mortar barrage splinters night,
I could relieve two for a rest
Pondering friendship, pluck or fright.

In a charred stable, on damp grain
Shock slaughtered cows shan’t want to eat,
Shiver twin jokers who remain
Exposed, in spite of this retreat.
A one, his liver’s slit straight through;
Sob and saliva down it drain.
The most that modern war can do
Dulls his complexion in his pain;
While Bud, hysterical because
His frantic nerve is fit to bust,
Cries: ‘Joe. Don’t die,’ though die he does.
His slackened lips absorb the dust.
Outside, their other boy friends bleed
Like murder, while the wilder, they
Work off hot rage or terror, shed
Layers of self like skins, away.
Here’s a commencement to a show
Of selfless love we all might spread
From common friend to common foe,
Sparing our livers from their lead.

Till then, though, I shall bear my brunt,
Cursing the colonel from my Rear:
Lavishly let lads Up Front
Spend all their love, share my fear.

Randall Jarrell
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Sidney Keyes
War Poet

I am the man who looked for peace and found
My own eyes barbed.
I am the man who groped for words and found
An arrown in my hand.
I am the builder whose firm walls surround
A slipping land.
When I grow sick or mad
Mock me not nor chain me:
When I reach for the wind
Cast me not down:
Though my face is a burnt book
And a wasted town.
C