Kaddish for a Warring World

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked awhile at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same -- and War's a bloody game....
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.
  
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz, --
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench -- 
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?"
  
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack -- 
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
  
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the Spring that you'll never forget.

Text Authorship:

• by Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon (1886 - 1967), "Aftermath", appears in Picture-Show, no. 30, first published 1919

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• FRE French (Français) (Pierre Mathé) , "Suites", copyright © 2016, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada and the U.S., but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

Confirmed with Siegfried Sassoon, PICTURE-SHOW and other poems, E.P. Dutton and company, 1920, page 47.

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Pierre Mathé [Guest Editor]

Give me your hand, my brother, search my face;
Look in these eyes lest I should think of shame;
For we have made an end of all things base.
We are returning by the road we came.
  
Your lot is with the ghosts of soldiers dead,
And I am in the field where men must fight.
But in the gloom I see your laurell'd head
And through your victory I shall win the light.

Text Authorship:

• by Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon (1886 - 1967), "To my brother"

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• FRE French (Français) (Pierre Mathé) , "À mon frère", copyright © 2017, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Please note: this text, provided here for educational and research use, is in the public domain in Canada, but it may still be copyright in other legal jurisdictions. The LiederNet Archive makes no guarantee that the above text is public domain in your country. Please consult your country's copyright statutes or a qualified IP attorney to verify whether a certain text is in the public domain in your country or if downloading or distributing a copy constitutes fair use. The LiederNet Archive assumes no legal responsibility or liability for the copyright compliance of third parties.

First published in Saturday Review, February 1916, as "Brothers", subsequently revised and retitled

Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]