A Poem Everyone Should Read, Especially for Easter Season

Catch-up and a Very Good Poem April 17, 2014 I realized last evening that I had not blogged even once during the first trimester of 2014. Part of that was the fact that I was having difficulty with the blog site and my laptop communicating with each other. My system is old and now unsupported and until I can save up my stuivers I cannot get a new laptop. So a writer makes do with what he has. It’s like having a typewriter when everyone around you has voice activated software. It snowed two days ago, a full inch on the ground. It was a lovely Spring snow. When I woke the outside temperature was 40F. Within half an hour of the snow starting, the thermometer dropped to 33. But by 4pm it was 40 again and most of the snow had melted. That kind of snow is to a Montanan what a drizzle is to a flatlander. And now for the promised for poem. The blog site has trouble separating lines – or I have trouble getting it to do so. So bear with, or look it up on your own to get the jist. It is a poem by a British soldier named Robert Palmer. Palmer was a good friend of poet Rupert Brooke, one of the biggest names among British poets of the WWI era. Brooke died in 1915. Palmer was wounded and taken prisoner in September 1916, and died of his wounds. He left only this one poem behind.// How Long, O Lord// How long, O Lord, how long, before the flood/ Of crimson-welling carnage shall abate?/ From sodden plains in West and East, the blood/ Of kindly men steams up in mists of hate,/ Polluting Thy clean air; and nations great/ In reputation of the arts that bind/ The world with hopes of heaven, sink o the state/ Of brute barbarians, whose ferocious mind/ Gloats o’er the bloody havoc of their kind,/ Not knowing love or mercy. Lord, how long/ Shall Satan in high places lead the blind/ To battle for the passions of the strong?/ Oh, touch Thy children’s hearts, that they may know/ Hate their most hateful, pride their deadliest foe./