[831] The Soldiers at Lauro

Guest poem submitted by Siddhartha Joshi, <siddha@>:

Young are our dead
Like babies they lie
The wombs they blest once
Not healed dry
And yet - too soon
Into each space
A cold earth falls
On colder face.
Quite still they lie
These fresh-cut reeds
Clutched in earth
Like winter seeds
But they will not bloom
When called by spring
To burst with leaf
And blossoming
They sleep on
In silent dust
As crosses rot
And helmets rust.

	-- Spike Milligan

Spike has a magical way with words. The ability to make a poem seem absurdly
simple to compose when it is anything but - unless you are blessed with the
skill - is very rare indeed. In "...Lauro" he captures the choked poignancy
of the moment of burying the dead deftly and with great economy of words. He
manages, at the same time to convey his silent, sad, hopeless anger at the
utter stupidity of war and it abbreviation of a life already too brief.

Siddhartha.

[Minstrels Links]

A very different sort of poem by Milligan is the light-hearted "Teeth",
Poem #701 on the Minstrels. There's a biography accompanying it.

From: DrOsh123@

Hi, 
  I enjoyed your poem!  How can people put all these poems on the web
without worrying about copyright laws? As I near the last page of
_Siddhartha_ today, I thought I must email someone who may have
an interest in the book.  It is the type of book that you cannot not 
read again; it is wonderful!  I teach English (writing mostly) and 
Linguistics
for UH (Hawaii in Hilo, Big Island).  Can anyone submit poems to this
site?   --Michael (Osh) Larish, Ph.D.

From: DrOsh123@

Hi, 
  I enjoyed your poem!  How can people put all these poems on the web
without worrying about copyright laws? As I near the last page of
_Siddhartha_ today, I thought I must email someone who may have
an interest in the book.  It is the type of book that you cannot not 
read again; it is wonderful!  I teach English (writing mostly) and 
Linguistics
for UH (Hawaii in Hilo, Big Island).  Can anyone submit poems to this
site?   --Michael (Osh) Larish, Ph.D.

From: WHITESYRENA@

How sad a poem from this man who, himself, suffered in  the war years.  It 
brings to mind the futile sacrifice of the lives of  all young men in  battle.