Strange Meeting

He died in the last year of his war; this poem was found among his personal effects. I found myself thinking of Wilfred Owen and Iraq all at once, this day. The poem is rich with words like overripe fruit, rotting in the carnage of some far-flung battlefield. It is ghastly, and profane, and yet seems like the zenith of a war-poet's gift.

Here are some of its lines:

"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

And this is what a paean to the modern world might sound like.