A poem by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918).

_______________________________________

I

Happy are men who yet before they are killed

Can let their veins run cold.

Whom no compassion fleers

Or makes their feet

Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.

The front line withers,

But they are troops who fade, not flowers

For poets’ tearful fooling:

Men, gaps for filling

Losses who might have fought

Longer; but no one bothers.

II

And some cease feeling

Even themselves or for themselves.

Dullness best solves

The tease and doubt of shelling,

And Chance’s strange arithmetic

Comes simpler than the reckoning of their shilling.

They keep no check on Armies’ decimation.

III

Happy are these who lose imagination:

They have enough to carry with ammunition.

Their spirit drags no pack.

Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.

Having seen all things red,

Their eyes are rid

Of the hurt of the colour of blood for ever.

And terror’s first constriction over,

Their hearts remain small drawn.

Their senses in some scorching cautery of battle

Now long since ironed,

Can laugh among the dying, unconcerned.

IV

Happy the soldier home, with not a notion

How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack,

And many sighs are drained.

Happy the lad whose mind was never trained:

His days are worth forgetting more than not.

He sings along the march

Which we march taciturn, because of dusk,

The long, forlorn, relentless trend

From larger day to huger night.

V

We wise, who with a thought besmirch

Blood over all our soul,

How should we see our task

But through his blunt and lashless eyes?

Alive, he is not vital overmuch;

Dying, not mortal overmuch;

Nor sad, nor proud,

Nor curious at all.

He cannot tell

Old men’s placidity from his.

VI

But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns,

That they should be as stones.

Wretched are they, and mean

With paucity that never was simplicity.

By choice they made themselves immune

To pity and whatever mourns in man

Before the last sea and the hapless stars;

Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;

Whatever shares

The eternal reciprocity of tears.

______________________________________

No. 1 - Led Zeppelin IV (1971), Led Zeppelin.

Song: Going to California - (https://youtu.be/PDIz4talyQk)

No. 2 - Willy And The Poor Boys (1969), Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Song: Midnight Special - (https://youtu.be/QBPqlxZD-h8)

No. 3 - Nevada Jukebox (1972), 60,000,000 Buffalo.

Song: Lovely Ladies - (https://youtu.be/-0uxaHGla-Y)

No. 4 - Honky Chateau (1972), Elton John.

Song: Honky Cat - (https://youtu.be/iPicSRPwogI)

No. 5 - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Bob Dylan.

Song: Girl from the North Country - (https://youtu.be/rK1Rn_eoeeE)

No. 6 - Sticky Fingers (1971), The Rolling Stones.

Song: Moonlight Mile - (https://youtu.be/Bq4Q69_mdZw)

No. 7 - Ballad Of Easy Rider (1969), The Byrds.

Song: Way Behind the Sun - (https://youtu.be/GpbklTDLWs8)

No. 8 - Catch A Fire (1973), Bob Marley & The Wailers.

Song: High Tide Or Low Tide - (https://youtu.be/KWeDXyxT3Qg)

No. 9 - Sunset Ride (1972), Zephyr.

Song: Moving Too Fast - (https://youtu.be/sH0aVoiUUho)

No. 10 - The Doors (1967), The Doors.

Song: Soul Kitchen - (https://youtu.be/kLbfviLC09k)

There is a bridge of gold shimmering across the sea

Which no man may walk upon, for men are faithless

And to them all truth is illusion, all beauty a suffering.

But what a grace it is to watch the waters dance,

To watch the white doves dive and sail,

To see the dusk bloom red like a lover's kiss upon the earth,

And to behold in a tender hour

How the golden bridge burns like a million lanterns,

Like a thousand perishing souls upon a hundred homebound ships

Voyaging, sinking unto the eternal West,

Where only Christ might lay his bare feet upon Her

On the day of Judgement when the Beast will rise

And by the tongues of false prophets

Will etch his mark on the breasts of nations.

But the righteous will be received upon that bridge,

Hand in hand with that same light and that same truth,

Rejoicing in warmth and love

Over the bridge of gold.

___________________________________

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea

Revelation 13:1

January, 1950 - Cornwall, England.

All was quiet and as it should be, in the small, but ever so unfortunate fishing town that need not be named. To name it would mean bearing its curse. It was a dull town, seemingly untouched by the unfathomable horrors that had swept across the world only some years ago. However, though it was quiet and all but asleep, a low and dense mist was moving in from the sea.

It would not have been terribly unusual to the residents of our unfortunate town, were it not for the evil smell that it carried within. A lingering, sulphuric smell . . . the smell of strange and unsettling things.

Of course, not all in town smelt this omen at once, as the putrid mist made its steady walk through the town’s winding cobbled streets, through the windows of its motley cottages, into the quiet homes where the fireplaces burned softly through the wintry night.

Indeed, not all smelt it, but one man, whose nose was prominent on his weather-beaten face, situated boldly above a thick, dark moustache, standing sentinel between two deep and world-weary eyes. This man was John Black, who at the precise moment the mist was rolling in, spreading its evil as it went, was sitting alone at the bar of a local tavern, drinking whisky and casually smoking his pipe.

John Black, an outsider, was known to the folk in town. He was an honest man, a hard working man, a solitary man, who, with a war behind him, had long settled into life as a fisherman. He was a man without a family, and the only brothers he had ever known had died in Europe.

Nevertheless, he smelt it, disturbing the pleasant, bitter scent of his tobacco pipe, John Black smelt it and instantly felt something rise up within him. It was fear, he could tell it a mile off, something he had not felt in many years.

As the mist was creeping in through every crack and crevice of the tavern, and as the hour hand stretched slowly toward midnight, the door swung open and into the tavern stepped three strangers.

The first was the tallest, and he was indeed freakishly tall. His neck and hands, the only parts of his body not concealed by his ghostly, black leather trench-coat, were covered in strange tattoos. Also, John noticed at once, his head was completely hairless, so that his menacing red eyes appeared his only distinguishable features. The other two men, dwarfed by this hairless monolith, entered behind and loitered in the shadows.

The tall man stopped before the bar and eyed John Black with his powerful red glare. Then he spoke:

“Sergeant John Black, here, after all.” He had a strange, almost foriegn accent and a preternaturally deep voice.

“I’m no Sergeant,” replied John, taking a cool sip from his whiskey. “Who are you?”

The tall man took a pace closer to the bar, stepping under a ceiling lamp which illuminated his whole figure. There was a wicked grin on his face, as though he knew something that no one else did.

“Some call me the Dragon, but I would prefer my name to stay out of it. It’s business, John Black, that’s all.”

John saw clearly now, the markings upon the stranger’s skin. They were the winding, serpentine patterns of scales, snake’s heads and dragon’s breath. He could smell it on the man, the evil.

“I don’t want anyone’s business. Goodbye now, thanks.”

John turned back to the bar. He looked at the barman, who was nervous. John gave him a wink and he disappeared into a backroom.

“I’m sorry, John, but I have come a long way, as have you. I simply cannot take no for an answer. Besides, you haven’t even heard what I’ve got to offer.”

John gulped down the last of his whiskey, placed some change on the bar, and put his pipe in the corner of his mouth.

“I suppose it’s time I go home.”

John Black walked straight past the tall, trench-coated man, toward the door. However, the two shadowy figures, who had until then remained silent, suddenly blocked the doorway. John noticed as they stepped into the light that the two men were incredibly pale, with scars on their expressionless faces. One wore a tattered tweed jacket and a fractured monocle, while the other donned a checkered green flat cap, fingerless leather gloves and a pair of racing goggles.

“I’m afraid I cannot let you go, for your own sake, John,” said the tall man, the Dragon.

“Please, take a seat, let’s talk.”

“Very well,” said John, seeing that there was no option beside violence.

The tattooed stranger pulled a chair and John Black sat down.

“Let’s hear it then,” said John.

“Right now, I have in my possession something that needs delivering. You have a boat, do you not?”

John Black sighed impatiently.

“I’m a fisherman, I don’t deal in cargo.”

“Ah, but a boat is a boat. I am not a stickler for the rules!”

John did not want to listen anymore. He stood up and paced toward the door, where the two deathly pale and oddly dressed men remained on guard.

“If only you would listen,” implored the tattooed man, though with a hint of irony.

“There’s so much in it for you!”

John stopped and turned around.

“What might that be?” he asked.

“Life eternal,” said the man, grinning. “Wealth, of course! Money, I have plenty of that to give. Please, John Black, I’m well aware of your little side-dealings in, what would you call it, exotic cargo.”

John’s patience was razor thin. He clenched his fists. At that moment the barman reappeared from some back room clutching an old shotgun.

“Kindly tell your goons to make way, or their lives will be far from eternal!”

The hairless freak chuckled grimly in his chair, not at all perturbed by the double-barrelled antique.

“Certainly,” he said and waved his tattooed hand at the two men. “Why don’t you sleep on it John, so that you may decide in the light of day.”

John Black left the tavern and went straight home to his bed. By then the fog was as thick as paint, and was settling everywhere about the town. It was evil, John knew it. Somehow, he had always known it, for it followed him. As his head hit the pillow, the hour hand struck one. He soon fell asleep and dreamt of things he had seen in Europe, terrible and obscene things. Things, that like eerie reflections on the water, he had also seen in the mist that night.

II

The following morning, the morning of what would turn out to be a gray and miserable day, John was out fishing at the tip of a rickety wooden pier, watching the dark blue waves crash one atop the other in mysterious dance.

To John Black’s content, the pier was absolutely empty, not a soul in sight! Only himself, his fishing rod and the massaging sound of the sea. The previous night’s mist and its rotten smell seemed to have moved on. Indeed, so it seemed, but this was not the case, for it was at the precise moment the hour struck eight that John Black’s nose was offended for the second time. It was, there could be no doubt, that very same stench which had cast itself over town last night, within which something evil had secretly moored, concealing itself as it made its midnight crawl through the streets.

John sat up in his fold-away chair and scanned the pier with alert, soldierly regard. There was nothing there, only the faint odour and the gusting sea wind. Suddenly, his fishing line snapped taut. He had caught something! He leapt onto the rod, but was instantly pulled to and fro by it. Whatever was on the end of that line was big, far too big to be controlled. It was too much, the rod was yanked straight out of John’s hands and pulled swiftly beneath the waves.

“Bloody hell,” John Black muttered to himself, staring over the pier’s edge into the sea.

“There goes your rod,” said a gruff voice in his left ear.

“Jolly good effort though, chap,” drawled another on his right.

John nearly jumped out of his skin. Standing beside him, seeming to have materialized from nowhere, were two men that he vaguely recognised. On his left was a short man dressed like a race car driver, while to his right a man dressed in tweed was eyeing him through a broken monocle. “It’s them!” John thought to himself, catching a strong whiff of sulphur. “Those goons from the tavern last night, come to bully me into their rotten deal!” Dark and stormy clouds appeared on the horizon, like something out of a story.

“What do you two circus freaks want?”

“Well now, there’s no need for insults, old chap,” said the tweed-clad halfwit.

“Just leave me alone,” said John, sulking over his drowned fishing rod.

“Please, Mr. Black . . . May I call you Mr. Black? We wouldn’t want Codger to get upset. He’s a little slow, if you catch my drift.”

“Who in God’s name is Codger?”

Suddenly the man in racing gear, wearing his ridiculous goggles, piped up:

“I’m Codger, and I ain’t slow! I’m quick! Do you think I’m slow? Well I ain’t, I ain’t!”

“Calm down, Codger,” said the tweeded gentleman. “Let me talk to the man. So, Mr. Black, have you had any time to consider my boss’s offer? What’s the verdict? I do hope it’s positive. The boss, he can get ever so angry about the most trivial matters. And this happens to be far from trivial!”

“The answer’s no,” said John Black. “Now clear off.”

The slow midget, with supernatural swiftness, produced a switchblade from his pocket.

“Nobody says no to the Dragon,” he said, angling the blade at waist height toward John Black’s guts.

“Keep pointing that little toy at me,” said John, cooly, “and you’ll be on the deck so fast, you’d think it was the grand prix.”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” implored the faux aristocrat.

However, the mad raceman started wielding the knife even more wildly, jabbing it near John’s cheek. John, acting on instinct alone, grabbed the arm which held the blade with one hand, and with his other gave the man a swift strike across the temple. The blow landed clean and he dropped to the rickety wooden deck of the pier with a thud.

“My lord, what have you done!” cried the other. “You’ve killed him! Murderer!”

“He’s not dead,” said John. “Just unconscious. He’ll come around in a little while.”

But the man in the tweed jacket was already on his knees checking the racer’s pulse. He cried out: “Dead, I say! Cold as Hell! You beast!”

John looked closely at the prostrate raceman, whom he did not hit very hard, and noticed to his utter surprise that he was in fact not breathing, that his eyes were staring dead and empty into the overcast sky. A trickle of blood then emerged from the man’s nostril.

“Oh, Christ,” John muttered. “He really is dead.”

Suddenly the tweed clad man sprang to his feet, adjusted his monocle and like a schizophrenic, assumed an oddly calm demeanor.

“Now, old chap,” he said. “As it seems you have just this very instant killed a man, robbing him of life, you are now placed in something of a pickle. So, my friend, it is up to you. This can all go away, if you only agree to our business proposition. Your boat, our cargo, A to B, done and dusted! Of course, the extravagant wealth we initially offered may be a little less than extravagant, on account of our dead associate here.” A genteel smile curled around the stranger’s pallid cheeks. “What do you say, Mr. Black?”

John stared down at the lifeless body. It didn’t seem real, as though something, he could not quite place his finger on it, was gironmously off keel. It was ever since that mist had set in last night, as though it had offset the balance of the world, made it absurd, like a dream in which he was waiting to wake up. He felt too, and this unnerved him most, as if something was laughing at him from some unknowable place, some fathomless depth. What it all meant, John Black did not know. He knew only that his choices were limited, and that he was at the whim of this farce of a man with his broken monocle.

“I will make it all go away,” the man kept saying, but the voice now seemed to emanate in strange echoes inside John’s own head. “It will all disappear, old chap . . . It will all vanish.”

The pier was sunless and gray, and the fog was beginning to rise all around them, like souls from the grave.

III

The hour was nearing midday, and the mist had set in, thick and odorous like chemical gas. John Black was standing on the jetty beside the gangway to his small fishing boat, affectionately named, Old Blue. Standing beside him was the man in the tweed suit, whose name he did not know, but whose thumb he felt pressing down ever harder upon his head.

“Any minute now, the boss will be here.”

Then, like living voices in a dream, footsteps clicked and clacked within the mist, and there emerged on the jetty two men. The first, tyrannically tall and darkly ministerial, was the one known as the Dragon, wearing his black trench-coat. However, it was the man who accompanied him that frightened John the most. It was him, the slow little raceman, risen from the dead, donning the very same goggles, fingerless gloves and racing-green flat cap he had worn when they tossed his lifeless body into the sea. There he was, living and breathing as if nothing had happened!

It was at that point that John Black, despite being a man of notably strong nerve, fainted. When he woke up he found himself lying on the deck at the fore of his boat, rocking from side to side with the swells.

“Wakey, wakey!” said a harrowing voice.

There he was, the Dragon, squatting down beside him.

“Where the hell are we?” said John Black. “This is my bloody boat, you devil!”

“Relax,” said the Dragon, his red eyes glowing like lanterns in the fog. “You’ve bumped your head, so let the fresh sea air in. That’s it, breathe!”

“Get away from me!” said John, staggering to his feet.

The boat was crashing into the waves, throwing him off balance, despite his sealegs. However, the Dragon did not move, like a flagpole fixed to the deck. Just then a strong wind blew, and the wind was like a thousand sirens, like a satanic choir squealing in his ears. Then the sky blackened before John’s very eyes to the colour of pitch and blood, and the sea began to stir and boil, like a witch’s cauldron, like the hatred and fantasies in the hearts of men. And out of the sea there rose a second dawn.

“My God,” said John Black, who could not believe it, for he did not believe.

“Yes,” said the Dragon.

Then the beast rose out of the sea and the earth was taken as first to bear its mark, for the righteous were nil.

The End

_____________________________________________________________________

It was her who first shone

Through that cheerless night

With silver gaze and mystery’s ring.

In the sea, in the deep bosom of her waves,

Where she first whispered;

Where, upon a thousand ridges

Shimmered sapphire’s gloom.

And what a beauty she was—

Enough to go mad.

Over her sea and her secret wisdoms

All my stones were skipped

Until I’d none besides my weary form.

How I danced alive across the moonlit waves,

Destined to drown beneath her raptures,

Singing to her: “Farewell, farewell, wild-eyed nights!”

And drowned I would have done in darkness,

If not for what truly shone there,

That rose again in that dark.

______________________

We set foot on the peak at midnight,

Upon the withering summit of despair

Where even the distant lights of distant towns

Fell funny on our eyes like colourful pandemoniums.

We wonder here and get lost somewhere

In the wildernesses of depravity.

We follow cloven prints in the turf

Through myriad scenes and mirage of self

Unto the crumbling ruins of yesterday

Where monsters sleep queerly like insomniacs.

Medusa rises out of a dream like dawn

And spreads her whorish tendrils

Over our motley, unshaven heads,

As we tilt our faces in unholy prayer

Toward inglorious chemicals.

Half our brains are dashed in piss steeped rivulets

In sunless cubicles strewn wall-to-wall with sublime obscenities.

Midnight swallows night in transient roars

Escaping the hellish scapes of our heads.

We are the Monks of Despair, perusing this place

Like the devil upon the earth.

Night watches us and stalks us

Like a thousand lonely, unmanned lighthouses

Casting new constellations onto the starless sky.

Cocaine dries our throats like the Sun doth the desert

And no more words can come from us.

You will not hear us muttering inanely at the walls,

You will not see us—us who are mad,

As we follow those lights to our demise.

We are the Monks of Despair.

We escheweth truth and trusteth evil

And experience we shall consume unto the pitiless end.

For nothing exists but the pleasure of living,

And all that the universe contains falls under our dominion.

We shall fill it further with the fantastical contents of our minds;

Fill it and bury all in our subterrainicon,

And the children will have to eat, sniff and claw their way out

Without ever opening their eyes to the horror

For they would die of surprise.

Oh children of this world,

Divine in thyself a new Path!

Do not dine on the corpse,

Nor suckle at the barren roots

Like a lamb silly to be a tree.

I have lusted after the greatest lust and found only madness.

I have searched inwardly by the greatest vanity and found the same.

I was a Monk of Despair meditating like a lunatic in lunacy.

But I have escaped the temples they constructed for us

And come bearing an ancient truth like a stone:

Be careful, ye who seek, what you wish for,

For it will come true!

_________________________________

How thin the walls are before the dawn,

When the flock, like a rain-clouds’ rise and fall

Resounds with a peal of maddened squawks.

Torrid with anger do they tear down what a thousand years made;

What a thousand souls perished over and a thousand hearts

Bled over through long, lamentable wars.

The truth is the wounds they suffered

That the idiots know nothing of—

The wounds that spilt a thousand rivers of blood

And roared through the geysers of Hell

So that men could know its sound.

The idiots who are sheep without meekness;

Who are lame for wolves’ easy gorging;

Who will stand naked and burn at the fiery Eastern Gate

Beside the emptiness of their words.

And there will be no water to save them but more blood,

And all the truth will vanish under our hatred like a dream

Before the Day breaks.

____________________________

It seemed that out of battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”

“None,” said that 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 had 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.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now. . . .”

___________________________________

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918).

From this lone arch do they bail

Tears of those sadly lost and tirelessly saved,

And for themselves never dwell in fear.

For us they mount the assault

On death’s indiscriminate demeanor,

And not for praise but kindness alone.

And the applause in our hearts from our homes,

Shall not fade in vain,

When on the eve of battle.

_______________________

Can you remember the nights?

The cold sighs after shy conversation,

And playing at feeling old before a day.

The night that hardens like cement

Round a black kaleidoscope of noise.

Still hearing and trying to save

The moonlight slaves from freefall.

Babels made in the catacombs of memory;

The dereliction of a naked scream

As it drowns through the psychic drainpipe.

Remembering the flies in shit,

The eternal fag in the bottomless shift.

The concealed sunsets spent under crows,

Waiting by the electric lamp

For something else to glow,

And sketching out sad rhymes en cigarette

Just to forget.

___________________