April soft and cold: Move him into the sun

For our last Monday in National Poetry Month, one from Wilfred Owen.

Given all the centenaries of last week—the landings at Gallipoli (nine month campaign with nothing to show for it but around 750,000 casualties on both sides by the time the Allies withdrew from the beaches they never got past), the first “successful” deployment of chlorine gas (which is still in use today), the beginning of the systematic extermination of Armenians by the Turks (still being denied by same)—I think that both the title and the content need no real analysis.

“Futility”

Move him into the sun—

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields half-sown.

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?