War: A Brief Playlist
of Songs & Poems
Songs
I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die by Country Joe & the Fish, 1967 — the whole album is a paen to Summer of Love beauty and a dirge to those lives and minds lost in the Vietnam War. The opening rag “Give me an F” (album version / Woodstock version) is an angry prelude to the deeper haunting soul-searching of “Who Am I,” the flower-child magic of “Pat’s Song,” the dull thunder of nuclear bombs eclipsing humans in “Magoo,” and the acid-rock escape of “Eastern Jam.”
“Broken English” by Marianne Faithful, 1980 — a blunt and pointed message sung with heartbreaking anger: Cold lonely, puritan / What are you fighting for? / It's not my security // It's just an old war / Not even a cold war / Don't say it in Russian / Don't say it in German / Say it in broken English …
“War Pigs” by Black Sabbath, 1970 — War pigs … ‘nuff said about the angry theme. The end of the song is surprisingly orthodox in its optimism, especially for a band called Black Sabbath. “Children of the Grave” is a good follow-up song. In the fields, the bodies burning / As the war machine keeps turning …
“Us & Them” by Pink Floyd, 1973 — a spare, subtle treatment of the dichotomies that lead to war and its depressing aftermath. Down and out / It can't be helped / But there's a lot of it about // With, without / And who'll deny / It's what the fighting's all about …
“Roads to Moscow” by Al Stewart, 1973 (version with historical background) — an epic look at the German assault on Russia, the Russian counter-attack, and Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian soldier — a betrayal Putin is exacerbating 80 years later. I'll never know, I'll never know why I was taken from the line and all the others / To board a special train and journey deep into the heart of holy Russia / And it's cold and damp in the transit camp, and the air is still and sullen …
“American Idiot” by Green Day, 2004 — an indirect critique of the invasion of Iraq and a direct attack on the conservative media that cheered it on. Don't wanna be an American idiot / Don't want a nation under the new media / And can you hear the sound of hysteria? / The subliminal mindfuck America ….
“Fortunate Son” (1969) and “Run Through the Jungle” (1970) by Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) — personalized accounts of getting signed up and getting hung out to dry. Yeah-yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes / Hoo, they send you down to war, Lord / And when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?" / Hoo, they only answer, "More, more, more, more" / … / Thought I heard a rumblin' / Calling to my name / Two hundred million guns are loaded / Satan cries, "Take aim" // Better run through the jungle / Whoa, don't look back to see …
“The Battle of Evermore” by Led Zeppelin, 1971 — a Tolkienesque redemption-tinged nightmare about war. Oh the war is common cry / Pick up you swords and fly / The sky is filled with good and bad / That mortals never know / … / The pain of war cannot exceed / The woe of aftermath / The drums will shake the castle wall / The ringwraiths ride in black / Ride on // Oh dance in the dark of night / Sing to the mornin' light / The magic runes are writ in gold / To bring the balance back / Bring it back …
“One” by Metallica (1988) — a post-landmine operating room nightmare. Darkness, imprisoning me / All that I see, absolute horror / I cannot live, I cannot die / Trapped in myself, body my holding cell …
“The Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire, 1965 — this is one of the most depressing Vietnam-era songs, yet it has some great lines and its references to nuclear war, China, and the Jordan River are still chillingly contemporary. The video version I picked puts emphasis on the Cold War bombing campaigns in Vietnam: The Eastern world, it is explodin' / Violence flarin', bullets loadin' / You're old enough to kill but not for votin' / You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'? / And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin' …
☮︎
Over on the mountain, thunder magic spoke
Let the people know my wisdom
Fill the land with smoke
— “Run Through the Jungle” (CCR, 1970)
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Poems
“Dulce et Decorum Est” gets at the gritty horror and psychological aftermath of fighting. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is a subtle, sad, angry memorial to those who fell in war. “Strange Meeting” is about two soldiers who meet each other in the afterlife. The first three poems are all by Wilfred Owen, a WWI poet who died in battle the week before Armistice.
“The Fool Rings His Bells” gives the reader a break from the heavy sadness of Owen, yet belies its lightness with a silent weight — the opposite of Keats’ notion that Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on. “The Shield of Achilles” is a wide-ranging attack on the petty human cruelty, the mass fascist politics, and the wasted beauty associated with war. “Song for War” is a recollection on the music of life that war takes from us. You can find other selections of war poems here (an impressive and extensive WWII selection), here and here.
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Dulce et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen, 1917-18)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
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Anthem for Doomed Youth (Wilfred Owen, 1917)
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, -
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
☮︎
Strange Meeting (Wilfred Owen, 1918)
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now …”
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The Fool Rings His Bells (Walter de la Mare, 1917)
Come, Death, I'd have a word with thee;
And thou, poor Innocency;
And Love – a lad with broken wing;
And Pity, too:
The Fool shall sing to you,
As Fools will sing.
Ay, music hath small sense,
And a tune's soon told,
And Earth is old,
And my poor wits are dense;
Yet have I secrets, – dark, my dear,
To breathe you all: Come near.
And lest some hideous listener tells,
I'll ring my bells.
They're all at war!
Yes, yes, their bodies go
'Neath burning sun and icy star
To chaunted songs of woe,
Dragging cold cannon through a mud
Of rain and blood;
The new moon glinting hard on eyes
Wide with insanities!
Hush!... I use words
I hardly know the meaning of;
And the mute birds
Are glancing at Love!
From out their shade of leaf and flower,
Trembling at treacheries
Which even in noonday cower,
Heed, heed not what I said
Of frenzied hosts of men,
More fools than I,
On envy, hatred fed,
Who kill, and die –
Spake I not plainly, then?
Yet Pity whispered, "Why?"
Thou silly thing, off to thy daisies go.
Mine was not news for child to know,
And Death – no ears hath. He hath supped where creep
Eyeless worms in hush of sleep;
Yet, when he smiles, the hand he draws
Athwart his grinning jaws
Faintly their thin bones rattle, and.... There, there;
Hearken how my bells in the air
Drive away care!...
Nay, but a dream I had
Of a world all mad.
Not a simple happy mad like me,
Who am mad like an empty scene
Of water and willow tree,
Where the wind hath been;
But that foul Satan-mad,
Who rots in his own head,
And counts the dead,
Not honest one – and two –
But for the ghosts they were,
Brave, faithful, true,
When, head in air,
In Earth's dear green and blue
Heaven they did share
With Beauty who bade them there....
There, now! he goes –
Old Bones; I've wearied him.
Ay, and the light doth dim,
And asleep's the rose,
And tired Innocence
In dreams is hence....
Come, Love, my lad,
Nodding that drowsy head,
'T is time thy prayers were said.
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The Shield of Achilles (W.H. Auden, 1952)
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.
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Song for War (W.R. Rodgers, 1945)
Put away the flutes
Into their careful clefts,
And cut the violins that like ivy climb
Flat to their very roots;
All that a subtler time
Allowed us we must now commute
To commoner modes; for here come
The hieratic trumpet and demotic drum
Fall in and follow, let the beat
Hyphenate your halved feet,
Feel its imbricating rhythm
Obliterating every schism
And split through which you might espy
The idiosyncratic I;
Let the assumptive trumpets pace
And pattern out the sounding space
Into stillnesses that numb
By iteration and by sum,
Till the walls of will fall down
Round the seven-times-circled town
Of your mind, and not a jot
Is left of fore or after thought.
O slowly go and closely follow,
Toe to heel and hill to hollow,
All the ditto feet that lead
You onward in a millipede
To the battle where, as one,
A hundred thousand tip and run.
But when the burning sun again
Behind the hill
Slides down and leaves the separate slain
Frosted and still,
Then over the rued fields that drum and trumpet fled
Slow musics rise like mists and wreathe their requiem
Round the bruised reeds, and coldly mounts the moon
Of thought, and rules among the quorum of the dead.
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