Excerpt: [This brought to mind Clifford, my great-grandmother's brother, who was one of the soldiers 'gassed' in France. He spent the rest of his life in and out of hospitals. He died in a VA hospital. Clifford, RIP.]
... maybe the greatest depiction of war's reality ever. (It is John Singer Sargent's Gassed. It is a very large painting and to see it, as I did once at the Boston museum, is overwhelming.) Here is more.
The Wind
All night the fierce wind blew --
All night I knew
Time, like a dark wind, blowing
All days, all lives, all memories
Down empty endless skies --
A blind wind, strowing
Bright leaves of life's torn tree
through blank eternity:
Dreadfully swift, Time blew.
All night I knew
the outrush of its going.
At dawn a thin rain wept.
Worn out, I slept
And woke to a fair morning.
My days were amply long, and I content
In their accomplishment --
Lost the wind's warning.
~Ivor Gurney, Selected Poems (edited by George Walter) (1996).
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