War poems

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Last Load

© Ted Hughes

Baled hay out in a field
Five miles from home. Barometer falling.
A muffler of still cloud padding the stillness.
The day after day of blue scorch up to yesterday,
The heavens of dazzling iron, that seemed unalterable,
Hard now to remember.

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Water Babes

© Ivan Donn Carswell

We were water babes, born in the arms of a sparkling brook
that patiently took us into its heart. At the very start we
were never far from its shingly banks, playing amid ranks
of serried wildflowers. When one of us all but drowned

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The Three Singers To Young Blood

© George Meredith

Carols nature, counsel men.
Different notes as rook from wren
Hear we when our steps begin,
And the choice is cast within,
Where a robber raven's tale
Urges passion's nightingale.

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Olney Hymn 66: I Will Praise The Lord At All Times

© William Cowper

Winter has a joy for me,
While the Saviour's charms I read,
Lowly, meek, from blemish free,
In the snowdrop's pensive head.

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To Henrietta Lyn

© Ivan Donn Carswell

We're going to miss you little girl, you leave an aching space
way out of all proportion to your size. Tomorrow we must face the day
without your lavish greeting - without your urgent bark to wake us up
and say, "Let me out of here, the sun is up, I want to play."

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Malcolm's Katie: A Love Story - Part II.

© Isabella Valancy Crawford

  O, Love builds on the azure sea,
  And Love builds on the golden sand;
  And Love builds on the rose-wing'd cloud,
  And sometimes Love builds on the land.

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On the Bill Which Was Passed in England For Regulating the Slave-Trade

© Helen Maria Williams

The hollow winds of night no more

In wild, unequal cadence pour,

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The power of the Lake

© Ivan Donn Carswell

The power of the Lake lingers still
so many years beyond its fascination
ending; it was there in the beginning,
an unveiling of towering sensitivities,

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The perfect cup

© Ivan Donn Carswell

We were born of tea, our mum could drink fourteen
cups a day, an awesome feat to try to rationalise,
beyond belief unless you knew where we had one
she would have two. The perfect cup, she said,

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The light was always you

© Ivan Donn Carswell

In the beginning there was light,
abundant light that truly lit the way,
time was never lost in dodging flights
of feckless shadows and darkness seldom

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The Ease and Charm of You

© Ivan Donn Carswell

There’s an infinity of wisdom in your smile that would deny
the winsome wit that lies at back of it; and then the droll and
cheeky svénska troll of you which peeps out from the
flimsy drape in which you sheet your public soul, an urchin

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The beans were exciting

© Ivan Donn Carswell

I tried cooking in my new Quicksilver jacket, just
an affectation I assure you – no, not the coat
or the cooking but me in the wearing of it,
a form of warped appreciation, and when I think

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A Une Madone (To A Madonna)

© Charles Baudelaire

Ex-voto dans le goût espagnol
Je veux bâtir pour toi, Madone, ma maîtresse,
Un autel souterrain au fond de ma détresse,
Et creuser dans le coin le plus noir de mon coeur,

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Talk to me of love

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Talk to me of love with wonder in your eyes,
of limber magic flying through the veiling air
and soft-edged silks trailing in a vintage plume,
the bloom of fragrant lavender intimate in your hair

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Something to shout about

© Ivan Donn Carswell

Captain AJ Shout, VC, MC, MID (& bar), who died at Gallipoli
of wounds and was posthumously awarded the VC,
a rare and prestigious award for most conspicuous bravery,
could say, even in dying, it was something to shout about.

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So Let Us Dare

© Ivan Donn Carswell

How do we discover an antidote to each other,
a faculty to commune in spiteful space?
Our bleeding hearts and noxious farts
tie us in a hopeless chase to free this place

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Remember with affection

© Ivan Donn Carswell

They’ll always tell a story those
obscure mementos stacked on
dusty shelves, demure and silent like
the other gaudy tributes tacked

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Out of The Annexe

© Ivan Donn Carswell

It grew out of the Annexe and our Corps in a world at peace
while our army trained, magnificent in its heroic pretence,
for an implausible war. They were halcyon days
in the shelter, days that combine in easy recollections

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Our Privilege

© Francis Bret Harte

Not ours, where battle smoke upcurls,
And battle dews lie wet,
To meet the charge that treason hurls
By sword and bayonet.