Keats, Shelley, Brooke, Wilfred Owen, and others...


Requiem for a Dead Poet



It's a constantly recurring problem,
the divinely gifted poet who just disappears,
without a reasonable explanation
quite unfairly and without justification
as if his name really had been writ in water,
leaving after him a terrible bereavement
and a sense of loss that must remain forever;
and it's worse each time it happens,
whether sailed away and taken by the storm
exactly when life's fortune starts to smile with health and happiness,
or exiled in the trenches to the last place any human being would deserve
to serve as cannon fodder for the universal vanity
of human martial madness executing poets with conductors,
painters with composers, artists, architects and ballet dancers,
mutilating them for life, sentencing them for life as invalids
or sparing them the whole war through to execute them in the end
a few days just before the armistice in wicked irony,
or just expelling them, deleting them for some mistake
that cannot be regretted.
Who is next?
But one thing will remain in all this tragic business,
which is the most irrefutable of unescapabilities,
that poets will be best remembered
who were most cut short and silenced
for no other reason than injustice.




Poetry by Christian Lanciai The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 538 times
Written on 2007-08-02 at 09:53

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Christian Lanciai The PoetBay support member heart!
Sorry, I got it all wrong. Rupert Brooke died on Shakespeare's birthday (23rd April) 1915 in the war, I think in the Gallipoli backfire massacre. 3rd of August was his birthday, so he was actually 120 years this day. Today, 4th August, was Shelley's birthday. It's also the birthday of Raoul Wallenberg, no poet but the greater as a humanitarian hero.
2007-08-04


Christian Lanciai The PoetBay support member heart!
Thank you. Actually today, August 3rd, was the day in 1915 when Rupert Brooke fell on the western front, 28 years old...
2007-08-03


Kathy Lockhart
beautifully written Chris and so true.
2007-08-03


Aashish Thakur
this is a good poem, saying eternal truth and pain...anyone who spoke for truth and love..always disappear early, but last for ever
2007-08-02