“let’s not kid ourselves / it’s better to pass through those years and come out the other side”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

Broken Bodies, Louis Golding

Not for the broken bodies,
    When the War is over and done,
For the miserable eyes that never
    Again shall see the sun;
Not for the broken bodies
    Crawling over the land,
The patchwork limbs, the shoddies,
Not for the broken bodies,
    Dear Lord, we crave your hand.

Not for the broken bodies,
    We pray your dearest aid,
When the ghost of War for ever
    Is levelled at last and laid;
Not for the broken bodies
    That wrought their sorrowful parts
Our chiefest need of God is,
Not for the broken bodies,
    Dear Lord—the broken hearts!


Golding (1895-1958) was born in Manchester, England, to Ukrainian-Jewish parents, and is best remembered as a novelist. This is from his first book, a 1919 poetry collection of war poems.

---L.

Subject quote from You Were Cool, The Mountain Goats. I am now convinced that WWI poems should always have subject lines from The Mountain Goats.