Sunk Cost

I’ve been writing a lot more lately, and submitting pieces to different places. One of the places I’ve started submitting to is the Rattle “Poets Respond” – a weekly call to write something topical, inspired by the news. Since these are going to go out of date very quickly, I’ve decided that, when they’re rejected, they’ll get posted on my Patreon (and, a few days later, here).

The inspirations for this glosa are outlined below the poem.

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

– Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

In for a penny, in for a pounding,
drowning the sounds of instruments,
the tallying, the rallying, the
shrillness of the endless quest for
excellence at the behest of a head who
rules with a stern eye and high talk,
storming and sending them out with blessings.
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest.

And we are cresting, testing the envelope,
groping around for the best place to
play pax – tracking the difficult,
the ultimate target,
crafting headlines, fed lines and
by Christ it’s better to be up here,
peering into the distance and bringing an end
to children, ardent for some desperate glory.

Hallelujah, we’re imbued with duty,
booting up and jacking in,
scintillating with certainty,
accreting so many hit points.
Adroit like tigers, we roar
adorations and praise to the glory
of all we survey, made bold by
the old Lie: Dulce et decorum est.

We are investing – we’re very sweet and fitting,
grips tightening, slipping over new lands,
bruised hands battling
dissolution, finally calling an end to
rumours of pedantry,
picking up the kids and dipping them in the Styx,
tipped for Pyrrhic victory,
pro patria mori.

Charge of the 2nd Lancers at El Afuli - in the Valley of Armageddon, 5 am, Friday 20th September 1918 by Thomas Cantrell Dugdale, courtesy of Picryl, which also supplied most of the image description

This piece is inspired by not only the sinking of the Iranian frigate by the US, but also the rather perturbing reports that:

commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.

There are oblique references here also to the bombing in Iran that destroyed a girls’ school in late February. I used the Spanish poetry form called the Glosa/ Glose, taking the last four lines of Wilfred Owen’s seminal war piece Dulce et Decorum Est as the cadenza/ epigraph (the famous piece that’s incorporated into the tribute), but decided on internal rhyming/ assonant free verse for the rest. (The Latin quote seems to have inspired me to mix in some Classical references to boot.)