Following on from my last post, here’s a bit more of Owen’s poetry.

I have just watched a programme on Channel 4 about the excavation of a dug out near Ypres in Belgium dug in 1917. It has been clogged with the mud and bones of some of the hundreds of thousands who died there for 90 years, but was found in remarkably good order (check out here for more details.)

It made me think of this poem.

Preserved like the shadow of Owen, who died aged 25, fighting a war that he did not believe in.

For people like me, Owen speaks clearly and immediately of things unimaginable to us- but where to him everyday normality.

Our fascination for stories of war is not healthy, or at least I do not think so. For every John Wayne or Bruce Willis, or docudrama about the Third Reich- there should be 100 Wilfred Owen’s.