My favorite War Poem
147
“next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims’ and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn’s early my
country ’tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?”
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
* * * * *
e. e. cummings
On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 8:41 PM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
King Agamemnon has marshaled his troops and is about to attack the
Trojans, but first he sacrificed a fat rich ox, five years old, to Zeus.
He called his key warriors, Nestor, Idomeneus, the Great and Little Ajax,
Diomedes and Odysseus. Menelaus was there as well. Here is his prayer to
Zeus:
"Zeus, Zeus,
god of greatness, god of glory, lord god
of the dark clouds who lives in the bright sky,
don't let the sun go down or the night descend on us!
Not till I hurl the smoke-black halls of Priam headlong--
torch his gates to blazing rubble--rip the tunic of Hector
and slash his heroic chest to ribbons with my bronze--
and a ruck of comrades round him, groveling facedown,
gnaw their own earth!"
We didn't learn any prayers like this in boot camp. The only thing wrong
with this prayer is that Zeus sent a "lying dream" to Agamemnon, thanks to
Thetis, so Agamemnon would be humiliated in battle and have to go to
Achilles and beg for his help. Today without concern for celestial beings
or theology, we cleverly call such misunderstandings "the fog of war."
Lawrence
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