NEWS OF THE WAR

PHOTO: TAMI SILICIO

"What in our lives is burnt

 In the fire of this?

 The heart's dear granary?

 The much we shall miss?

 

 Three lives hath one life--

 Iron, honey, gold.

 The gold, the honey gone--

 Left is the hard and cold.



 Iron are our lives

 Molten right through our youth.

 A burnt space through ripe fields,

 A fair mouth's broken tooth."





 --Isaac Rosenberg, August 1914

"The cherry trees bend over and are shedding

 On the old road where all who passed are dead,

 Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding

 This early May morn when there is none to wed."





--Edward Thomas, The Cherry Trees

"In twos and threes they have not far to roam

    Crowds that thread eastward, gay of eyes;

 Those seek no further than their quiet home,

    Wives, walking westward, slow and wise.



 Neither should I go fooling over clouds,

    Following gleams unsafe, untrue,

 And tiring after beauty through star-crowds,

    Dared I go side by side with you;



 Or be you in the gutter where you stand,

    Pale rain-flawed phantom of the place,

 With news of all the nations in your hand,

    And all their sorrows in your face."





--Wilfred Owen, Six o'clock in Princes Street

image via Sisyphus Shrugged and Seattle Times

UPDATE: Read Hal Bernton's article in The Seattle Times, that reports how Tami Silicio and her husband were fired in reprisal for this photograph of flag-draped coffins. Link via Orcinus.