The Greater War

As today is the centennial anniversary of the beginning of World War One, I thought it would be appropriate to share a poem I wrote for a final assignment for a history course on the Great War I took last semester. The Great War was not honorable or idealistic. It was a complicated engagement in which both sides experienced staggering loss. The war changed the course of human history and put on trial the ideologies of nationalism, patriotism, imperialism, and honorable death. It was their war to fight, but it is our war, now a hundred years removed, to remember.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (george santayana)

The Greater War

We are the generation

of a hundred years removed.

Removed from

                        the parades,

                        the farewell handkerchiefs waving

                        for a dapper man in uniform, smiling,

                        not knowing

that his grinning face would be blown off.

Removed from

                        the quiet town in the valley,
                        serene until

                        it burns black

                        and charred and broken

                        by men who were only following orders.

Removed from

                        the trenches,

                        winding miles of graves

                        filled with men who were already dead, they just didn’t know it.

Removed from

            the gas,

                        men choking on the poison they created:

                        what an honorable way to die.

Removed from

            the children

            who grew up with daddies off to war

            and pennies jingling in their pockets

            and vegetables growing in their victory gardens

            and the big, bad Huns being squashed by Uncle Sam

            and their brains slowly turning to mush

            so they must take their medicine,

            big heaping spoonfuls of bitter war.

           

We are a generation

of a hundred years removed, but

this was not our war.

Our war, our greater war, is with time.

We cannot forget.

We will not forget.