Signed With Their Honour

Apr 25, 2007 | Arts, Australian Values, Cultural Values, Values, War

For ANZAC Day

 

 

Two poems about the madness of war:

Mental Cases by Wilfred Owen

Naming of Parts by Henry Reed 

and a poem for the truly great – in our case the diggers:

I Think Continually by Stephen Spender.

_______________________________

 

 

 

For fourteen hours yesterday I was at work, teaching Christ to lift his cross by numbers and how to adjust his crown; and not to imagine the thirst till after the last halt. I attended his supper to see that there were no complaints and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb, and stands at attention before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha.

~  Wilfred Owen, just before he was killed, in the last days of the war

 

Thank you for reading this far!  You might think producing a post like this takes a bit of work. 
It does! If you’ve appreciated it you might consider encouraging me. ( We all like validation! )   

Buy Me A Coffee

All posts

Categories

You might also like:

Draft Mateship Guidelines Exhumed

Fair Dinkum Aussie Mateship Cetrificate Test   new Mateship test will ensure Australia strikes the right balance between the British and the rest, says Minister for Aussie Mateship, Smeagol K. Dic. The Ministry today released a draft guide...
Read More

Why NOT Benny Condoms?

  Okay, it can’t be avoided.   ir Roger wrote this in a fit a few weeks ago and he was in a variety of minds as to whether he ought to publish it. Was it intemperate? Of course. It was Sir Roger. Anything else? Was it wrong? Sir Roger, on...
Read More

Disembowel the Leader

Lord Water Cunntiham in High Spirits!   We have received news from our Dear Leader, Lord Water Cunntiham, that he is in high spirits today. Very high spirits indeed! There is a definite spring in his trackie-suited step today! Yes, girls and boys, the Labor Party...
Read More

Anzac Day 2011

  Carnage incomparable, and human squander    On this Anzac Day: f there is one thing that can be said of war it is that it is a massive betrayal of Humanity. It is a monstrous failure of human imagination, vision, ingenuity and intelligence....
Read More

Life in Australia

One word: Durian   obert – a self-styled “foreigner” to our shores – is most upset to have been hoaxed by the false promise and dashed hopes of life in Australia. A few days ago Robert commented on an ancient post here at Values Australia and...
Read More

How Howard ‘Destroyed’ Hanson

"We're running hard on security and terrorism"  t’s just past the sixth anniversary of the sinking of the SIEV-X and the drowning of approximately 353 people.We found this post by ex-Liberal candidate for Reid, Irfan Yusuf, via the [Andrew]...
Read More

A Beautiful Thing

US Policy Adviser redefines “Beauty” We have noticed a report that Kenneth Adelman has claimed that what the Coalition has done in Iraq is “a beautiful thing”. And we agree whole-heartedly. It’s a pity so few people now are able to see it this way. It just takes a...
Read More

‘Sub-Prime’ Explained as Never Before

  "Too stupid to be real..."   f you only watch one online comedy sketch this year, (as we used to say (almost) at ABC Promos) this should be it. We promise. You will laugh…and perhaps cry at the same time, If you ever wondered what was...
Read More

M-m-m-My Corona

  What is it With Toilet Paper?   When age can, uninvited, link the distant poppy past of The Knack with the all too adjacent Present and come up with a pun, Sir Roger is delighted that there are others still living who appreciate the troubling incongruity...
Read More

Dulce et decorum est

  (Hint: No it's not) atched The Einstein Factor this evening and the second contestant’s subject was the life and poetry of Wilfred Owen (more or less). One of the poems mentioned — which of course it had to be — was Dulce et Decorum Est. Everyone...
Read More

The Ascent of Man & Descent of the DLP

Draining the Swamp   This is by way of ridding ourselves of the bible-bashers,    he deluded believers in absolute truths and faiths built on fairy stories and long-disproven assertions about the universe and how it works, who have lately...
Read More

Migently Mountain Manifesto: 3

11.   Science is not a set of facts. Science is a process. The process is to — a) observe, b) speculate, c) propose an explanation (or “theory”), d) devise an experiment which i) can be repeated (“replicable”) and ii) can prove the theory false (“falsifiable”) e)...
Read More

Spelling It Out

  Okay, no surprise… The Bush White House lied to the American people. …Except that one of the people who knew it at the time, a US Senator, has dropped a “Bombshell on the Senate Floor”. o here it is at last. Not the smoking gun we had before...
Read More

Just a couple of questions…

  We have just a couple of questions. One older; one new   Firstly... Some economists get paid a lot, we assume, at least the “guru”-type ones who appear on television and write books. What do they get paid for exactly?  To divine the future, supposedly,...
Read More

Even Worse Than Terrorism

“The supreme international crime”    efinitions of terrorism in western countries are remarkably similar. According to Chomsky, writing in 2006, official definitions include that terrorism is the calculated use of violence or...
Read More

Coronavirus? Pandemic?

What the Actual Fuck?Has this been the worst ever social and economic disaster in our lifetimes? Or has it been the squealing brakes we needed, to curb our pre-pandemic headlong, tunnel-vision rush towards . . . well, where? . . . We were too busy to think about that....
Read More

Realty Reality

It's All Upside Down (and we know it) MC Escher understood the madness. Up is down, inside out is outside in, right is left and theft is might and nothing is what it seems, though that is all we have, and we try to make sense of a world that is incomprehensible.  And...
Read More

Disembowel the Leader

Lord Water Cunntiham in High Spirits!   We have received news from our Dear Leader, Lord Water Cunntiham, that he is in high spirits today. Very high spirits indeed! There is a definite spring in his trackie-suited step today! Yes, girls and boys, the Labor Party...
Read More

The Front Fell Off

ll the sage analysts and opinionators, as well as the “'King Makers'” – as News Ltd “'journalist's” like to refer to themselves – seem to be agreed that there is a mood for change in the electorate. They agree that it’s not really about John Howard...
Read More

Education and Life

   Be Normal and Fit In    ir Roger’s close confidante writes: My mother used to ask me if I wouldn’t prefer to work in a bank. In those days it was a safe occupation – safe as a bank, literally. A job for life with almost guaranteed...
Read More

A Man’s a Man

Robert Burns statue in Writers Museum EdinburghWithin the first five seconds we were hooked   e were on the way to work, tuned in to Radio National’s Book Show, a replay of the opening address by Andrew O’Hagan from last year’s Sydney Writers’...
Read More

The Ancient Marinara

  He's a Legend, and our friend   e wish he wouldn’t describe himself as “ancient”. That tends to put us at the edge of a category we fiercely resist. Richard Neville, one of the founders of homepagedaily.com, was the infamous, notorious...
Read More

‘My Culture the Bastard Child’

his angry, loving, passionate, poetic piece from John White was a comment on the previous post but we love it so much we do not want it lost in the wastes of commentdom. It deserves to be shared with you. So here it is:  Australian Values,...
Read More

A-Wishin’ an’ a-Hopin’

Crowning Achievement   limate change negotiations at the APEC conference in Sydney have been an enormous diplomatic breakthrough, acting as a catalyst for future action, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says. Enormous! And completely...
Read More

Three Stooges

Howard's 3 Stooges   redictably enough, the rightwing’s stooges are being wheeled out to divert the taint of almost inevitable defeat away from John Howard. Downer “Larry” Downer is a self-deluding fop and a dandy. He’s a joke. But as long as...
Read More

Drugs are Bad

 M’Kay?   mean, some drugs are bad. Just bad. Some drugs are good, like medicine. Some drugs, well, they’re legal even if they kill you, like cigarettes, or, like alcohol, kill other people you run into. But drugs drugs are just B-A-D. Inherently....
Read More

What Cheney Really Thinks

Invading Baghdad Would Create a Quagmire   n this interview from April 15th, 1994 Dick Cheney reveals the reasons why invading Baghdad and toppling Saddam Hussein's regime wouldn't be a great idea. He also stipulates that "not very many"...
Read More

Swallowing Bullshit Whole

Buying the War - Bill Moyers How did the mainstream press get it so wrong about Iraq?   his may be the most “important” video you will see this year. It’s a special program from Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. Buying the War is a careful,...
Read More

For the Record

Eating Air   ir Roger wrote to several Labor pollies recently complaining about Labor’s (really Rudd’s) lack of stance on the Haneef matter. The first response, to his credit, was from on behalf of Kevin Rudd. Dear [….you...
Read More

Costello and Iran

Peter Costello reaching out to his future subjects Our loyal visitors,   anting to know how to react to Peter Costello’s decision to disappear up his own arse at long last, may have been waiting with bated breath to hear Sir Roger’s wisdom on...
Read More

0 Comments