“Eleven – Dulce Denied”
An Elegiac Sonnet For Wilfred Owen,
One of My Favorite Poets,
Killed 4 November, 1918,
Canal de la Sambre à l’Oise, France
Eleven months, eleven days, and where
were you when they began to ring the bells
to tell the world that everything you had
fought with such horror for, was done again?
They’d stilled the demon war once more and there
was shouting in the streets and toffs and swells
who’d read your words, and thought them sad,
put them aside, to take out now and then.
Do you suppose they knew just where you’d gone?
That words were all they’d ever know of you?
Or were they lost in dreams of hope and glory,
not caring who had paid, and was withdrawn?
I read your words and know it’s never true.
Dulce’s never been pro patria mori.