It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers - teacherweb.com

The School Globe Sometime in the summertime Now I am grownup
All alone in an empty schoolroom and literate, and I sit in my chair
Sometimes when I hold Where about me hang as quietly as a fuse
Our faded old globe Old maps, an abacus, pictures,
That we used at school Blackboards, empty desks. and the jungles are flaming, the under-
To see where oceans were If I raise my hand brush is charged with soldiers,
And the five continents, No tall teacher will demand the names on the difficult maps
The lines of latitude and longitude What I want. go up in smoke.
The North Pole, the Equator and the South Pole – But if someone in authority
Sometimes when I hold this Were here, I’d say I am the cause, I am a stockpile of chemical
Wrecked blue cardboard pumpkin Give me this old world back toys, my body
I think: here in my hands Whose husk I clasp is a deadly gadget,
Rest the fair fields and lands And I’ll give you in exchange I reach out in love, my hands are guns,
Of my childhood The great sad real one my good intentions are completely lethal.
Where still lie or still wander That’s filled
Old games, tops and pets; Not with a child’s remembered and pleasant skies Even my
A house where I was little But with blood, pus, horror, death, stepmothers and lies. passive eyes transmute
And afraid to swear everything I look at to the pocked
Because God might hear and James Reaney black and white of a war photo,
Send a bear how
To eat me up; It is Dangerous to Read Newspapers can I stop myself
Rooms where I was as old
As I was high; Margaret Atwood It is dangerous to read newspapers.
Where I loved the pink clenches
The white, red and pink fists While I was building neat Each time I hit a key
Of roses; where I watched the rain castles in the sandbox, on my electric typewriter,
That Heaven’s clouds threw down the hasty pits were speaking of peaceful trees
In puddles and rutfuls filling with bulldozed corpses
And irregular mirrors
Of soft brown glass upon the ground. and as I walked to school
The school globe is a parcel of my past, washed and combed, my feet
A basket of pluperfect things stepping on the cracks in the cement
And here I stand with it detonated red bombs.

Dulce Et Decorum Est We Wear the Mask

Guilt Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, We wear the mask that grins and lies,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes –
Leona Gom Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge. this debt we pay to human guile;
your mother giving you a set of dishes Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
and all you said was but I move around But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind; And mouth with myriad subtleties.
so much and you can never forget Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the boots
her hurt face turning away. Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. Why should the world be over-wise,
The best friend you accused of In counting all our tears and sighs?
flirting with your boyfriend when Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling Nay, let them only see us, while
all the time you knew it was him Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, We wear the mask.
you just couldn’t face it. But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
The argument with your father about And floundering like a man in fire or lime – We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
not having seen his damned magazine Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, To thee from tortured souls arise.
then finding it in your room As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. We sing, but oh the clay is vile
and never admitting it. Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
telling your office mate you In all my dreams before my helpless sight But let the world dream otherwise,
agreed with her motion then He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. We wear the mask!
voting with the others after all.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
thousands of them, little knots Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
you can’t shake loose from your memory. And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
it’s too late now to say you’re sorry. His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
they contract along your nerves If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
to consciousness, whenever you think Come gurgling from the froth-corrupted lungs
you are not a bad person, there Bitter as the cud
they come, little lumps of guilt Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
making their daily rounds, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
like doctors, keeping you sick. To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen



Even my
passive eyes transmute
everything I look at to the pocked
black and white of a war photo,
how
can I stop myself

It is dangerous to read newspapers.

Each time I hit a key
on my electric typewriter,
speaking of peaceful trees

another village explodes.