Poetry during World War II consisted of many different topics for poems from the events that took place before and after the war. Many people wrote poems during World War II troops and even people that witnessed it. People also wrote their experience during the war. It was a good way for people to express thier feelings.
Holocaust
We played, we laughed we were loved. We were ripped from the arms of our parents and thrown into the fire. We were nothing more than children. We had a future. We were going to be doctors, lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers. We had dreams, then we had no hope. We were taken away in the dead of night like cattle in cars, no air to breathe smothering, crying, starving, dying. Separated from the world to be no more. From the ashes, hear our plea. This atrocity to mankind can not happen again. Remember us, for we were the children whose dreams and lives were stolen away. -Barbara Sonek |
After the War
When the tale is told in text books Of the battle in the west, Where the desert meets a desert And the pasture ain't the best. When the story's set and stated, Written down in black and white For the up and coming soldier To peruse from left to right. When the printed pulp is published, Page on page of lettered lines, And its dispositioned forces And its places, points and times. When the book is there before us, Full of tactical defeats, And technical advantages And strategical retreats. When the past is put on paper, Telling why and when and where, It'll curb the curiosity Of the thousands that were there. For the folks that fought this warfare, On the home front or at the base, Can peruse their penny papers And see such and such took place, But the bloke amidst the battle Sees his own small, sticky sphere, And hasn't heard what happened Further forward or down rear. He doesn't know the northern news, The southern state's the same, And he hopes to hell that convoy Coming closer turns out tame. So when those books see daylight And meet him face to face, He can pick 'em up and so find out What actually took place. - Lin Rowell, A Troop, 27 Bty |
War Baby
He has not even seen you, he Who gave you your mortality; And you, so small, how can you guess His courage or his loveliness? Yet in my quiet mind I pray He passed you on the darkling way - His death, your birth, so much the same - And holding you, breathed once your name. - Pamela Holmes |