Louis Aragon
(1897-1982) French poet, writer, editor, Communist; active in French Resistance in the Second World War. Francis Poulenc set to music Aragon's poem "C".
Paul Batou
Minor Dreams
(included on Poets Against War web site)
I am a kid,
Born in Iraq.
My dreams were minor,
A cup of milk or water to drink,
A crayon to color, / A pencil to write,
A book to read, / A toy to play with,
A friend to talk to, / A pet to love,
A father to listen to, / A mother to hug,
A bed to sleep, / A home to rest,
A light to see with, / A school to study at,
A song to listen to, / A country to grow in.
I am a kid,
Born in Iraq,
My dreams were sanctioned,
Shame on you all.
Thomas Carlyle
(1795-1881)
Represented in this program by an excerpt from
Sartor Resartus
(on Selfknowlege.com).
Renny Christopher
Mutanabi Street Book Mart Bombing, Baghdad, 3/5/07
(from Poets Against War web site)
"Iraqis have long had a reputation as the Middle East’s bibliophiles.” ~ Los Angeles Times
Gently, in a stately, dignified manner, pages fall from the sky
disarticulated from books the way that limbs have been severed
from bodies. A car repurposed as a bomb smolders in the street
in front of what had been lively arguments over values and prices.
The people gathered in Mutanabi Street came for love of books;
books are the opposite of death. Only the ideas on the pages should
fly. Metaphor should not become fact, pages flying up, coming down
on the bodies of the killed and wounded, blood and ink smearing.
Robert Desnos
(1900-1945) Author, poet, columnist, critic, and member of French Resistance in the Second World War. Wrote the poem "Le disparu" (which Poulenc set to music) about a friend arrested and seen no more. The same happened to him; and he died of typhoid soon after being liberated from Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Charles Dickens
(1812-1870) The encounter with the recruiting sergeant comes
from Barnaby Rudge, set in the late-18th century.
Keith Douglas
(1920-1944)
Fought in North Africa, and was killed in France a few days after the Normandy landings.
Simplify Me When I'm Dead
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.
As the processes of earth
strip off the colour of the skin:
take the brown hair and blue eye
and leave me simpler than at birth,
when hairless I came howling in
as the moon entered the cold sky.
Of my skeleton perhaps,
so stripped, a learned man will say
“He was of such a type and intelligence,” no more.
Thus when in a year collapse
particular memories, you may
deduce, from the long pain I bore
the opinions I held, who was my foe
and what I left, even my appearance
but incidents will be no guide.
Time's wrong-way telescope will show
a minute man ten years hence
and by distance simplified.
Through that lens see if I seem
substance or nothing: of the world
deserving mention or charitable oblivion,
not by momentary spleen
or love into decision hurled,
leisurely arrive at an opinion.
Remember me when I am dead
and simplify me when I'm dead.
Carole R Fontaine
Wrote the poem, Children At War.