April is National Poetry Month

...So today's poem is "To His Dead Body" by Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), written for Robert Graves when Sassoon thought he had died:

When roaring gloom surged inward and you cried,
Groping for friendly hands, and clutched, and died,
Like racing smoke, swift from your lolling head
phantoms of thought and memory thinned and fled.

Yet, though my dreams that throng the darkened stair
Can bring me no report of how you fare,
Safe quit of wars, I speed you on your way
Up lonely, glimmering fields to find new day,
Slow-rising, saintless, confident and kind -
Dear, red-faced father God who lit your mind.

(no subject)

Thorne Anderson is a photo-journalist who recently returned from Iraq. (Thanks to our friends in Missouri for sending me information on him.) He has posted an amazing essay with photos on the web that harkens back to my posts on war as a public health issue. In particular, Anderson talks about sanctions, water suppies, cancer wards, and infant mortality. It is an editorial, but I hope you enjoy it.