Wilfred Owen. British 1893-1914

Perhaps a strange choice for Christmas, but our world is being torn apart again by fighting, and the ludicrous idea that War=Freedom.

Owen fought in the First World War, won the Military Cross and was killed in action a month before the Armistice.

FUTILITY

Move him into the sun-
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved- still warm - too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?