Armistice Day
thoughts, poems, stories
St John's Cathedral, 2007,
acrylic/ canvas 30 x 48
But
Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs,
and
even from these dead doubts
she
gathers her most vital hope.
Herman
Melville, Moby Dick
A HOMETOWN PARADE
Whistles blast, marchers align
the drum major pumps his mace.
Snares rattle, bugles blare.
Vendors hawk balloons
Cheerleaders cheer, horses prance.
marching bands play el Capitan,
crowded sidewalks dance
to patriotic songs.
Flat bed trucks haul local stories
draped in crepe paper ribbons,
Kleenex Carnations, and waving
county fair queens.
Sirens whine and children scream,
batons tumble through the air.
At the cemetery
a field of flags sprouts.
Honors for the fallen. Crowds disperse
with handshakes, hugs and see-you-laters.
They’ll meet at the bar
reminisce older
times,
ask themselves, when will I be
among the remembered.
Some
time in the 1950s, I asked why the tanks were absent from the parade,
my
father said their treads tore up the pavement so they were dismissed.
I
told him I missed the tanks.
My friends, refugees from Budapest, did not.
a reconstruction.
Stones, 2013
Mixed media/ paper
20 x 24
STONES
Surfaced bones,
simple stones,
caribou—
All rise when Odin reigns
Walker’s angel
lifts the chosen
to cross the river.
The Valkyrie’s selected comply.
Brevet immortals,
Dust in the wind,
staved by bullets,
bombs, and cold.
Collect at the gates
of the streets of death.
For honor and thanks,
and the glory of kings.
Assuage ancient ghosts,
unquestioned duty.
Honor, tradition,
and fame.
Revolt like the angels,
roll the dice for peace and
tranquility. Embrace humility.
So great has been the interest in the purely military side
of the struggle
that one is apt to
forget that the war is worth study as the supreme occupation
of many great nations, whose every energy, physical, moral,
and economic, has
been put to its service, and relentlessly tested in its fiery furnace.
Henry
Beston, A Volunteer Poilu
A future historian may find the war more interesting,
when considered as the supreme achievement
of the industrial civilization of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries,
than as a mere vortex
in the age-old ocean of European political strife.
Henry
Beston, A Volunteer Poilu
Often I think of the beautiful town
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old
town,
And my youth comes back to me.
Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, My Lost Youth
VETERANS’ DAY
I
walk Mt. Pleasant Avenue,
detour
through the grave yard
reset
broken flags at Veterans’ graves.
Read
stories etched in stone
worn,
weathered, audible
The
dead cry out to guide.
What is done, accomplished,
set in stone we find history.
Hear the stories, our stories
Who we were, are, and will be,
where we went and why.
Carved,
etched, worn flat
by
wind and water,
draped
in lichen.
Stones
record journeys,
of
men rent asunder
by
the thunder of war,
of
lives that gave meaning
to
a path forward.
Like
Gilgamesh they ventured
left
others to carve their stories.
Some
ended abruptly.
with
bullets, bombs, and disease
Raymond
Lowe,
Born
Rockport, Massachusetts, August 1894,
Died
October 4, 1918,
Grave marker, Mt. Pleasant
Cemetery, Gloucester, MA.
Killed in action near
Breuilles, France.
The very day the Kaiser
telegraphed Wilson seeking peace.
38 days before the Armistice
to end the war to end all wars.
War records
On October 4, 1896, John
Henry Pruitt, USMC born, little Rock, AR.
On October 3, 1918 John
Henry Pruitt was wounded
capturing 40 German soldiers and destroying
2 machine guns in the Grand
Offensive
On his birthday, 1918, John
Henry Pruitt died from wounds
inflicted the day before the
Kaiser telegraphed Wilson seeking peace.
38 days before the
Armistice to end the war to end all wars
John Henry Pruitt received
2 Posthumous Medals of Honor.
Arlington National Cemetery
Records
He is dead, the beautiful youth,
The heart of honor, the tongue of truth
He the light of us all,
Whose voice blithe as a bugle call,
Whom eyes followed with one consent,
The cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word,
Hushed all murmurs of discontent.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Killed at the Ford.
On Webster Street and Davis
Street
two granite blocks with
brass plaques
Maxwell Parsons
Born 1895
Died July 3 1918
Joseph Mattos Jr.
born Gloucester,Ma. October
4, 1899
Joseph Mattos Jr. was killed in
action in France, October 5, 1918
Memorial Plaques
The very day after the
Kaiser telegraphed Wilson seeking peace.
37 days before the
Armistice to end the war to end all wars.
....a boy about nineteen
had been hit in the chest and half his side was gone—
...he raised his sad tired
eyes to mine and tried a brave smile.
... All the poor fellows
look at us with the same expression
of appreciation and thanks;
Leslie Buswell, Ambulance No. 10
OXY-MORONIC
These
wars for peace,
these
civil wars,
religious
crusades, and
wars
to free the enslaved
that
incur such debt as to
indenture
the future.
Some
leaders boast a direct line to God
Declaim
justice and freedom
at
the hands of sword or cannon.
young
ones fall never to rise.
The
mind of man is convoluted.
November 4, 1918—
Poet Wilfred Owen (Dolce
Decorum Est)
killed in action in France
7 Days before the
Armistice to End the War to
End All Wars was signed.
November 5, 1918—
One year to the day after
being commissioned,
Lt. Samuel P. Mandell was shot down. He
survived
the crash of his airplane
but was
executed by a German soldier.
6
Days before the
Armistice
to End the War to End All Wars was signed.
November 11, 1918—
The
Day the
Armistice
to End the War to End All Wars was signed,
Bells
rang out in celebration.
Wilfred
Owen’s parents were notified of his death.
Fleeing
the potato famine,
Irish
immigrants flooded
into the United States 1845 – 1850
They
fought in the Civil War
with
both Confederate and Union Forces
FLASH
Gone.
Dust
in the wind.
Remembrance
their only oxygen.
Insufflated
by monuments,
parades,
and speeches.
Wars
that cleanse.
Bloody
and dirty.
Not
all come home to welcome.
Not
all come home.
Immigrants
purchase a place in line
Join
the fight for good.
Believe
for what they stood.
Some
return to what they’d left.
The
labor welding the rods.
The
backs lifting the loads
dreaming
of better for those
they’ve
mothered and fathered.
“We were conquered because we failed to
understand that Victory is a Spirit, and it is in ourselves alone that we must
attack and destroy Ialdabaoth.”
Anatole France, published The Revolt of the Angels
in 1914.
Perhaps he had seen Madame Mira
another soothsayer.
AFTER READING GEORGE WILL
The
self-inflated soar
high,
on self engendered thermals.
Below,
tethered
by belief,
stopping
by to eye day lilies—
short-lived
but glorious,
laboring
for all of us,
more
than I for me.
Their
passion begets life.
Dicks
and Henrys
berate
doubters.
Traitors,
cowards, thieves, and liars.
Unpatriotic.
Denounced by
these
holy men,
these
priests of war.
who
battle spirits,
ghosts,
and fears.
Kindled,
rekindled
left
unattended
while
they ascended.
Destiny
manifested.
Ends
through means
blessed
by legacy
leaving
their refuse for others
to
gather and reassemble.
At
Gettysburg, on Little Round Top,
the
air chills on a very warm day.
At
Cemetery Ridge, a pall coats the field.
Methinks that what they call
my shadow here on earth
is my true substance.
Herman Melville, Moby
Dick
In closing, Satan muses that the real battle is not external, but
internal to every man, demon and seraph. We must overcome our own jealousy,
fear, superstition and ignorance, and cultivate wisdom, compassion, curiosity,
and the love of arts and beauty instead.
October 4, 1957
The Russians launched
Sputnik
into Earth orbit, fueling
the fires of The Cold War.
39 years from the very day
the Kaiser telegraphed Wilson seeking peace.
39 years and 38 days after
the Armistice to end the war to end all wars.
Ah! vainest of all things
Is the gratitude of kings;
The plaudits of the crowd
Are but the clatter of feet
At midnight in the street,
Hollow and restless and loud.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Belisarius
Monuments
Some
monuments wreak
of
efforts to exorcise ghosts.
We
are here
Born
here
of
the Earth.
Take
care.
Take
care children,
your
dreams of peace
may
wilt and melt
in
the heat of
sons
and daughters,
the
get of aristocracy.
Mothers don’t raise your children
to die in wars in foreign lands.
to drown in creeks and swamps,
to hang from trees.
Mothers raise your sons and daughters
to grace the world.
During
the War of 1812,
New
England states considered secession.
Peace
with England would end a blockade
that
was infringing on trade.
1860,
at the party convention in Charleston, SC
W.
L. Yancy, one of the ‘fire eaters’
endeavored
to split the Democratic Party
and
secure secession for Southern States.
To
preserve the way of living,
slavery
was necessary.
THE
DEAD
Shaw’s men on Beacon Hill,
Union intended.
Still we wait: For North to
recognize the South
for whites to
recognize blacks
for all to recognize the
people here before
the Italian sailed for
Isabella, Queen of Spain.
Today is magnificent
tomorrow awaits with
no guarantees.
From Mary Chestnut’s Diary:
Leaving Montgomery, Alabama
with companions.
Mr. Browne was horrified when a man was shot
in the street.
“It is war fever. Soldiers must be fierce.
It is the right temper for the times cropping
out.”
WORK
Extrapolation
requires thought,
thought requires
effort,
effort is work.
WORDS TO LIVE BY
Beware
the vanity.
Embrace
the sanity.
Ruminate.
Cogitate.
Cerebrate. Deduce.
EPILOGUE
Madame Sosostris, renowned clairvoyant,
did not foresee the implications of
the patent clerk’s calculations.
all original poems ©2020 Ed Touchette
Other work credits to author indicated in the copy ______________________________
The foresight of man is
short, and his prudence is for ever being baffled.
The blows of fate are
ineluctable no man shall evade his doom.
There is no counsel no
caution that avails against destiny.
Hapless as we are, the same
blind force which regulates
the courses of atom and
star fashions universal
order from our vicissitudes
. Our ill fortune is necessary
for the harmony of the
universe.
Anatole France, Revolt
of the Angels
______________________________________________________________________
WATERS
OF THE LETHE
An Ode to Charlottesville
We stood beneath the lintel
Where vistas are boundless.
But crossing to Elysium,
We stopped to quench our thirst.
Blinded by the light and freedom
We anointed others to our rightful place,
Went back.
To divine with sprigs of oak and hick’ry,
Talk through cans attached with string.
Save the statues
Fly the flags
To remark the horrors.
The waters of the Lethe prompt serial
delusion.
©2020 Ed Touchette
* * * *
Harry Crosby, a graduate of Harvard, and Richard Hall, a
graduate of Dartmouth, enlisted in the AFS and drove ambulances. Both succumbed
to war injuries— Hall instantly when a stray German shell landed close to his
vehicle.
Crosby died from a self inflicted gun shot in 1929.
It was believed he never recovered
from his near death experience
when an artillery shell exploded
just yards from his ambulance.
He was the lone survivor.
Suggested reading:
The Poems of Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow
The Coming Fury—Bruce Catton
A Diary from Dixie—Mary Boykin Chestnut
The Revolt of the Angels—Anatole France
The Wasteland—T.S.Eliot
Still Looking—John Updike
Moby Dick—Herman Melville
For the Union Dead—Robert Lowell
Ambulance No. 10—Leslie Buswell
Black Sun—Geoffrey Wolff
Op Eds, New York Times,
Washington Post—George Will
America's Longest War—George C Herring
The Armies of the Night— Norman Mailer
A Volunteer Poilu— Henry Beston
