Refugees of Reason

Upon Reading Barbusse's Under Fire

In wartime life as well as death separates you without even giving you time to think about it.
~Henri Barbusse

Subtitled: the horrors of it all

Survival!
That says it all.
It comes first to mind
as I devour
Barbusse's Great War chronicle,
for he lived through that obscene
and bloody conflagration;
on no man should befall
the horrors of it all.

To war I've never been,
nor to war I want to go;
this author, who's lived and seen
the horrors of it all,
captured, as only one can firsthand,
the death, the destruction,
the toll on body and soul
of the personal (and the social),
known only to one
that could personally recall
the horrors of it all.

Though not in fact a novel;
perhaps more like a journal,
no plot, no rise, no fall;
yet put it down one cannot,
too real this bleak portrayal.
Could be it requires no plot
because our hero's endurance
became the thread that held together
a genuine testament to human survival!

~gtk

We are a hundred years since the Great War, but it still impacts upon the geopolitics of our day. Especially with the 100 year anniversaries since 2014 through 2018 I find myself reading and reflecting upon those years and the impact of those years. Under Fire is the most recent novel I have read concerning the war and it inspired this poem. My hope you like the poem and I hope it inspires you to read the book.