In Honor of Memorial Day (Observed)

The Dragon and the Undying

ALL night the flares go up; the Dragon sings
And beats upon the dark with furious wings;
And, stung to rage by his own darting fires,
Reaches with grappling coils from town to town;
He lusts to break the loveliness of spires,
And hurls their martyred music toppling down.

Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,
Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder’d seas.
Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night,
And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams.
Tenderly stooping earthward from their height,
They wander in the dusk with chanting streams,
And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung,
To hail the burning heavens they left unsung.

Siegfried Sassoon, 1918

Sassoon has written some of the best war poetry that I have read. Brutal, touching, and so visceral you feel as if you are in the bloody trenches with him, haunted by the ghost of his slain younger brother. You can read more at Bartleby.com. Also, check out Wilfred Owen and Robert Graves. I forget what Memorial Day is all about other than a long weekend until I read this stuff. Let us not forget that though they may fade away into anonymity, and though their names no longer ring, the slain in battle are the very bands that made this human engine we now pilot possible. They were the first modular men, and we salute them.