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# What Can a Poet Do in Times of War?
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/can-poet-war/
- Published: 2019-10-29T03:20:26.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-21T04:44:31.000Z
- Description: There are epochal battles blazing around the world, Blinding to those who look, shrapnel of noon-day sun In the concerned citizen’s eye.
- Author: Andy
- Tags: poetry, environment

“*No feats of scholarship console us for bloodshed*.”- Robert Vansittart, 1st Baron Vansittart

There are epochal battles blazing around the world, \[[1](https://www.propublica.org/article/taste-of-the-climate-apocalypse-to-come?ref=andyposner.org)\]  
blinding to those who look, shrapnel of noon-day sun  
in the concerned citizen’s eye.

In my grandfather’s day I might’ve enlisted  
physical courage, learned to parade and to kill, given  
my life or spent a lifetime writing of valor and victory.

Each generation has had its wars, but never such as these:  
Conquered lands rising up in flame, conquered seas in foam  
and man, in charge of everything, losing all control.

Now there are those who camouflage themselves in disgust,  
holed up in their living rooms, shouting at the evening news;  
and others who grab for a machine gun to fire at an inferno.

(Once soldiers sought immortality in verse, believing  
that civilization would last, if not forever, for long enough.  
But we know too much of history, and ecology, and physics.)

*Does poetry not make anything happen?* 
*Does it not survive?* 
*Is it not a way of happening, a mouth?* \[[2](https://poets.org/poem/memory-w-b-yeats?ref=andyposner.org)\]

I’ll tell you what poets can do in war: Open our mouths  
like uncultured beasts whose roar and spit douses  
the flamethrower, makes him stop dead and sob.

\-

\[1\] Lustgarten, Abrahm. “A Taste of the Climate Apocalypse to Come.” *ProPublica*, 22 Oct. 2019,  
[<https://www.propublica.org/article/taste-of-the-climate-apocalypse-to-come](https://www.propublica.org/article/taste-of-the-climate-apocalypse-to-come?ref=andyposner.org)\>

\[2\] Auden, W.H. "In Memory of W. B. Yeats*."* Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, <[https://poets.org/poem/memory-w-b-yeats](https://poets.org/poem/memory-w-b-yeats?ref=andyposner.org)\>