Poetry Friday: Heartache and Poppies

Poppies in a Field in France 

Poppy/Opium Crop in Afghanistan

Scottish Soldier in the Trenches WWI

Battle of the Somme, WWI

Soviet Soldier, Afghanistan

American Soldier, Afghanistan

I'm more than a little depressed about Obama's speech on Tuesday. I just wish we could get our troops out of Afghanistan - there's a reason it's called "The Graveyard of Empires." I keep reading what the Soviet Union said at comparable stages of its long, demoralizing conflict in Afghanistan, and it sounds almost word for word like what we're hearing from our generals now, and from the White House. So for Poetry Friday I'm going to link to three videos over at YouTube that I hope people will watch. All are songs, the lyrics of which are poems, so I'm not too far off track, right?  Listen to and watch the Sarah Brightman first. It breaks your heart.

American Soldiers, Afghanistan

Here is Sarah Brightman (singing Pie Jesu from Requiem)

Bruce Springsteen (singing Pete Seeger's Bring 'Em Home)

John McDermott (singing The Green Fields of France)

Here are lyrics to The Green Fields of France: 

Well how do you do, young Willie McBride,

Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside,

And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun,

I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.

I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen,

When you joined the great fallen in 1916.

I hope you died well, and I hope you died clean.

Or young Willie McBride, was it slow and unseen?

[Chorus:]

Did they beat the drums slowly,

Did they play the fife lowly?

Did they sound a death march, as they lowered you down?

Did the band play the last post and chorus?

Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?

In some faithful heart, is your memory enshrined?

And though you died back in 1916,

In that faithful heart, are you forever nineteen?

Or are you a stranger without even a name,

Enclosed now forever behind the glass pane,

In an old photograph, torn and battered and stained,

And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame?

[Chorus]

The sun how it shines on the green fields of France.

There's a warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance.

And look how the sun shines from under the clouds.

There's no gas, no barbed wire, there're no guns firing now.

But here in this graveyard, it's still No Man's Land,

The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand

To man's blind indifference to his fellow man

To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.

[Chorus]

Aye, Willie McBride, I can't help wondering why

Did those who lie here know why did they die?

Did they really believe when they answered the cause,

Did they really believe that this war would end wars?

The sorrow, the sufferin', the glory, the pain

The killing and dying were all done in vain.

For young Willie McBride, it all happened again,

And again, and again, and again, and again.

Did they beat the drums slowly,

Did they play the fife lowly?

Did they sound a death march, as they lowered you down?

Did the band play the last post and chorus?

Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

Did they beat the drums slowly,

Did they play the fife lowly?

Did they sound a death march, as they lowered you down?

Did the band play the last post and chorus?

Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest?

Siegfried Sassoon's Gravestone

American Soldier Speaking to Civilians in Afghanistan

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Elaine Magliaro hosts the Poetry Friday round-up today. 
Thanks, Elaine!