A bit fatalistic, but my favorite war poem

[timepiececlock]

Inspired by myrtleneunice's poetic quote response to war:

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

-- Sara Teasdale

Comments

[mrthursday.livejournal.com]

Did you discover it via Ray Bradbury's Mrtian Chronicles as I did? It is in a quite simpley heart breaking short story.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I found it from Ray Bradbury's short story of the same title. I don't know if it was also in The Martian Chronicles, as I've never read them, but I found it in an reading anthology text in ...9th grade english, I think.

[ratphooey.livejournal.com]

That is amazing. Thank you for posting it.

Re:

[mrthursday.livejournal.com]

The Martian chronicles was a collection of stories, including the one you mention (about the automated house right?).

It's one of my favourite short stories and very apt. Good choice Rashaka!

[octopedingenue]

That's a *gorgeous* poem. The Ray Bradbury story named after it made me cry the first time I read it.


This one is also one of my favorite poems about war, though I can't say it's of the happy-fluffy variety (is there such a thing?)...

Grass
Carl Sandburg


Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work ---
000000000000I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
000000000000What place is this?
000000000000Where are we now?

000000000000I am the grass.
000000000000Let me work.

Re:

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Ah... that's sad. reminds me of that old song "where have all the flowers gone", about the passing of time and war.

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[rashaka.livejournal.com]

It's it though? I love the imagery, like "swallows circling with their shimmering sound," and other lines.

I discovered int in reading a short story by Ray Bradbury, of the same title. It's a heart-wrenching story, and he uses the poem in it beautifully. I was reading some of ther other poems because I liked this one, and I found one about love that I liked even more (if possible.) And it was also both lovely sad. I had to use it in a Spuffyfic-- you can read the poem here, at the very top of the story.

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[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Yep, it's the house one. I also, back in junior high, read another short story by him that broke my heart even more. It was all about this little girl who lived on Venus, where the sun only shown once every 7 years. And she remember what the sun was like before she'd moved to Venus, and had waited four years to see it again. That story almost had me crying.