Conscious

    His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed.
    His eyes come open with a pull of will,
    Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.
    A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill . . .
    How smooth the floor of the ward is! what a rug!
    And who's that talking, somewhere out of sight?
    Why are they laughing? What's inside that jug?
    "Nurse! Doctor!" "Yes; all right, all right."

    But sudden dusk bewilders all the air--
    There seems no time to want a drink of water.
    Nurse looks so far away. And everywhere
    Music and roses burnt through crimson slaughter.
    Cold; cold; he's cold; and yet so hot:
    And there's no light to see the voices by--
    No time to dream, and ask--he knows not what.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

Wilfred Owen was an influential English poet, renowned for his poignant war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare during World War I. His works, such as 'Dulce et Decorum Est' and 'Anthem for Doomed Youth,' convey the brutal realities of war and challenge the romanticized notions of it. Owen's poetry, characterized by its stark realism and exploration of soldiers' suffering, has had a lasting impact on both literature and the collective memory of the war.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

The Chances

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

A Terre

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

Futility

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

Exposure

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, Simple Poetry

English

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Exposure

        I

    Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us . . .
    Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent . . .
    Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient . . .
    Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
            But nothing happens.

    Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
    Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
    Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
    Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
            What are we doing here?

    The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow . . .
    We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
    Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
    Attacks once more in ranks on shive...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

Disabled

    He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
    And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
    Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
    Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
    Voices of play and pleasure after day,
    Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

    About this time Town used to swing so gay
    When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees
    And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,
--In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
    Now he will never feel again how slim
    Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
    All of them touch him like some queer disease.

    There was an artist silly for his face,
    For it was younger than his youth, last year.
    Now he is old; his back wil...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

Wild with all Regrets

        (Another version of "A Terre".)

        To Siegfried Sassoon



    My arms have mutinied against me--brutes!
    My fingers fidget like ten idle brats,
    My back's been stiff for hours, damned hours.
    Death never gives his squad a Stand-at-ease.
    I can't read. There: it's no use. Take your book.
    A short life and a merry one, my buck!
    We said we'd hate to grow dead old. But now,
    Not to live old seems awful: not to renew
    My boyhood with my boys, and teach 'em hitting,
    Shooting and hunting,--all the arts of hurting!
--Well, that's what I learnt. That, and making money.
    Your fifty years in store seem none too many;
    But I've five minutes. God! For just two years
    To help myself to this good air of your...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

The Gorse

In dream, again within the clean, cold hell
Of glazed and aching silence he was trapped;
And, closing in, the blank walls of his cell
Crushed stifling on him ... when the bracken snapped,
Caught in his clutching fingers; and he lay
Awake upon his back among the fern,
With free eyes travelling the wide blue day,
Unhindered, unremembering; while a burn
Tinkled and gurgled somewhere out of sight,
Unheard of him; till suddenly aware
Of its cold music, shivering in the light,
He raised himself, and with far-ranging stare
Looked all about him: and with dazed eyes wide
Saw, still as in a numb, unreal dream,
Black figures scouring a far hill-side,
With now and then a sunlit rifle's gleam;
And knew the hunt was hot upon his track:
Yet hardly seemed to mind, someho...

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Mental Cases

    Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
    Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
    Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
    Baring teeth that leer like skulls' tongues wicked?
    Stroke on stroke of pain,--but what slow panic,
    Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
    Ever from their hair and through their hand palms
    Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
    Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

--These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
    Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
    Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
    Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
    Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.
    Always they must see these things and hear them,
   ...

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen

The House Of Dust: Part 01: 07: Midnight; Bells Toll, And Along The Cloud-High Towers

Midnight; bells toll, and along the cloud-high towers
The golden lights go out . . .
The yellow windows darken, the shades are drawn,
In thousands of rooms we sleep, we await the dawn,
We lie face down, we dream,
We cry aloud with terror, half rise, or seem
To stare at the ceiling or walls . . .
Midnight . . . the last of shattering bell-notes falls.
A rush of silence whirls over the cloud-high towers,
A vortex of soundless hours.

The bells have just struck twelve: I should be sleeping.
But I cannot delay any longer to write and tell you.
The woman is dead.
She died, you know the way. Just as we planned.
Smiling, with open sunlit eyes.
Smiling upon the outstretched fatal hand . . .

He folds his letter, steps softly down the stairs.
The doors...

Conrad Aiken