Post a favourite poem meme

[chickenfeet]

for ann1962

Aristocrats

"I Think I Am Becoming A God"

The noble horse with courage in his eye,
clean in the bone, looks up at a shellburst:
away fly the images of the shires
but he puts the pipe back in his mouth.
Peter was unfortunately killed by an 88;
it took his leg away, he died in the ambulance.
I saw him crawling on the sand, he said
It's most unfair, they've shot my foot off.

How can I live among this gentle
obsolescent breed of heroes, and not weep?
Unicorns, almost,
for they are fading into two legends
in which their stupidity and chivalry
are celebrated. Each, fool and hero, will be an immortal.
These plains were their cricket pitch
and in the mountains the tremendous drop fences
brought down some of the runners. Here then
under the stones and earth they dispose themselves,
I think with their famous unconcern.
It is not gunfire I hear, but a hunting horn.

Keith Douglas Tunisia 1943

Comments

[ann1962]

Thank you!

The lines

How can I live among this gentle
obsolescent breed of heroes, and not weep?

are truly beautiful, and poignant given what happened to him.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

I know. KD is one of my favourite poets.

[sabotabby]

Agreed. Brilliant.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Don't take this wrong but I really would not have pegged you as someone who would have read Keith Douglas

[sabotabby]

I am culturally ignorant so this is the first I've heard of him.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

He wrote some good stuff for a guy who died at 24. He was an officer in a British tank regiment. He was killed by a sniper coming back from patrol in Normandy in 1944.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Love that. And had never seen it before. It takes a more compassionate view of my disgusted belief that most supporters of most wars think that wars are sports matches. Nothing wrong with sports--but if that's what we really want, why have wars?

I'll look for more by Douglas.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

KD was a very perceptive chap for one who died at 24. He served in a Yeomanry regiment which was, in its way, a highly anachronistic embodiment of a social order that Jane Austen would have recognised.