Who you were then, is who you are now.

Here is one poem that really hit home for me on the way from childhood to adulthood:

Father and Son
Delmore Schwartz

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached." -Franz Kafka

Father:
On these occasions, the feelings surprise,
Spontaneous as rain, and they compel
Explicitness, embarrassed eyes----

Son:
Father, you're not Polonius, you're reticent,
But sure, I can already tell
The unction and falsetto of the sentiment
Which gratifies the facile mouth, but springs
From no felt, had, and wholly known things.

Father:
You must let me tell you what you fear
When you wake up from sleep, still drunk with sleep:
You are afraid of time and its slow drip,
Like melting ice, like smoke upon the air
In February's glittering sunny day.
Your guilt is nameless, because its name is time,
Because its name is death. But you can stop
Time as it dribbles from you, drop by drop.

Son:
But I thought time was full of promises,
Even as now, the emotion of going away----

Father:
That is the first of all its menaces,
The lure of a future different from today;
All of us always are turning away
To the cinema and Asia. All of us go
To one indeterminate nothing.

Son:
Must it be so?
I question the sentiment you give to me,
As premature, not to be given, learned alone
When experience shrinks upon the chilling bone.
I would be sudden now and rash in joy,
As if I lived forever, the future my toy.
Time is a dancing fire at twenty-one,
Singing and shouting and drinking to the sun,
Powerful at the wheel of a motor-car,
Not thinking of death which is foreign and far.

Father:
If time flowed from your will and were a feast
I would be wrong to question your zest.
But each age betrays the same weak shape.
Each moment is dying. You will try to escape
From melting time and your dissipating soul
By hiding your head in a warm and dark hole.
See the evasions which so many don,
To flee the guilt of time they become one,
That is, the one number among masses,
The one anonymous in the audience,
The one expressionless in the subway,
In the subway evening among so many faces,
The one who reads the daily newspaper,
Separate from actor and act, a member
Of public opinion, never involved.
Integrated in the revery of a fine cigar,
Fleeing to childhood at the symphony concert,
Buying sleep at the drugstore, grandeur
At the band concert, Hawaii
On the screen, and everywhere a specious splendor;
One, when he is sad, has something to eat,
An ice cream soda, a toasted sandwich,
Or has his teeth fixed, but can always retreat
From the actual pain, and dream of the rich.
This is what one does, what one becomes
Because one is afraid to be alone,
Each with his own death in the lonely room.
But there is a stay. You can stop
Time as it dribbles from you, drop by drop.

Son:
Now I am afraid. What is there to be known?

Father:
Guilt, guilt of time, nameless guilt,
Grasp firmly your fear, thus grasping your self,
Your actual will. Stand in mastery,
Keeping time in you, its terrifying mystery.
Face yourself, constantly go back
To what you were, your own history.
You are always in debt. Do not forget
The dream postponed which would not quickly get
Pleasure immediate as drink, but takes
The travail of building, patience with means.
See the wart on your face and on your friend's face,
On your friend's face and indeed on your own face.
The loveliest woman sweats, the animal stains
The ideal which is with us like the sky…

Son:
Because of that, some laugh, and others cry.

Father:
Do not look past and turn away your face.
You cannot depart and take another name,
Nor go to sleep with lies. Always the same,
Always the same self from the ashes of sleep
Returns with its memories, always, always,
The phoenix with eight hundred thousand memories!

Son:
What must I do that is most difficult?

Father:
You must meet your death face to face,
You must, like one in an old play,
Decide, once and for all, your heart's place.
Love, power, and fame stand on an absolute
Under the formless night and the brilliant day,
The searching violin, the piercing flute.
Absolute! Venus and Caesar fade at that edge,
Hanging from the fiftieth-story ledge,
Or diminished in bed when the nurse presses
Her sickening unguents and her cold compresses.
When the news is certain, surpassing fear,
You touch the wound, the priceless, the most dear,
There in death's shadow, you comprehend
The irreducible wish, world without end.

Son:
I begin to understand the reason for evasion,
I cannot partake of your difficult vision.

Father:
Begin to understand the first decision.
Hamlet is the example; only dying
Did he take up his manhood, the dead's burden,
Done with evasion, done with sighing,
Done with revery.
Decide that you are dying
Because time is in you, ineluctable
As shadow, named by no syllablle.
Act in that shadow, as if death were now:
Your own self acts then, then you know.

Son:
My father has taught me to be serious.

Father:
Be guilty of yourself in the full looking-glass.

Know something, my friends? Men have always..and I mean Always bonded better than women. The following is a song that came out of WWI, in which my father fought: Life is a book that we study.
Some of its leaves bring a sigh.
There it was written, my Buddy,
that we must part, you and I...

Nights are long since you went away.
I think about you all through the day,
My buddy, my buddy,
Nobody (or "no buddy") quite so true.
Miss your voice, the touch of your hand-
Just long to know that you understand,
My buddy, my buddy,
Your buddy misses you.

Buddies through all of the gay days.
Buddies when something went wrong.
I wait alone through the gray days,
missing your smile and your song...

Nights are long since you went away.
I think about you all through the day
My buddy, my buddy,
Nobody (or "no buddy")quite so true.
Miss your voice, the touch of your hand-
Just long to know that you understand,
My buddy, my buddy,
Your buddy misses you.



and from this, comes the buddy poppy. Ladies, I hate to say this, (I've said it before) but soldiers do not fight for mother love and apple pie. when they are in the trenches...they fight for each other. And I would have it no other way...

June 6th is D-Day..The Longest Day...goodnight, and God Bless you all.

Scrat, I have never read "Tender Comrade" before. It is moving and very sad. Thank you for posting it here. It occurred to me that the soldier returning from war will be forever changed.

A classic from Tommy Sands...a reflection on lost friends in Northern Ireland:

There Were Roses
Tommy Sands

My song for you this evening it's not to make you sad
It's not for adding to the sorrows of this troubled northern land
But lately I've been thinking and it just won't leave my mind
To tell you of two friends one time who were both good friends of mine.

Allan Bell from Banagh he lived just across the fields
A great man for the music and the dancing and the reels
O'Malley lived in South Armagh to court young Alice fair
And we'd often meet on the Ryan Road and the laughter filled the air.

There were roses
Roses
There were roses
And the tears of the people ran together

Though Allan he was protestant and John was catholic born
It never made a difference for their friendship it was strong
And sometimes in the evenings when we heard the sound of drums
We said it won't divide us for we'll always be the ones,

For the ground our fathers ploughed in, the soil it is the same
And the places where we say our prayers have just got different names.
We talked about the friends who died and we hoped there'd be no more.
It's little when we realized the tragedy in store.

It was on a Sunday morning when the awful news came round,
Another killing had been done just outside Newry town.
We knew that Allan danced up there, we knew he liked the band,
but when we heard that he was dead we just could not understand.

We gathered at the graveside on that cold and rainy day
And the minister he closed his eyes and he prayed for no revenge
And all the ones who knew him from along the Ryan Road
They bowed their heads and they said a prayer for the resting of his soul.

Well, fear it filled the countryside, there was fear in every home
When a car of death came prowling 'round the lonesome Ryan Road
A catholic would be killed tonight to even up the score.

Oh christ, it's young O'Malley that they've taken from the door
"Allan was my friend", he cried, he begged them with his fear
But centuries of hatred have ears that cannot hear
'An eye for an eye' was all that filled their minds
And another eye for another eye till everyone is blind

So my song for you this evening it's not to make you sad
It's not for adding to the sorrows of this troubled northern land
But lately I've been thinking and it just won't leave my mind
To tell you of two friends one time who were both good friends of mine.

I don't know where the moral is or where this song should end
But I wonder just how many wars are fought between good friends
And those who give the orders are not the ones to die
It's Bell and O'Malley and the ones like you and I...

That is indeed a classic, Cav, a vivid and realistic portrait. Thomas Hardy observed with wonderment:

The Man He Killed (1902)
'Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

'But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.

'I shot him dead because -
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although
'He thought he'd list, perhaps,
Off-hand like - just as I -
Was out of work - had sold his traps -
No other reason why.

'Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.'

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

"....quaint and curious...". What an understatement.

Letty, I know that my personal experience doesn't necessarily expound universal truths, but one of my oldest friend is a fellow I met while in the US Air Force stationed in Morocco in the late fifties. We've kept in touch all these years, and still exchange Christmas cards every year. c.i.

C.I. You are a person who keeps in touch, so that makes you part of the universal set.

I had no idea that you were in the Air Force, but it certainly explains your penchant for planes. Amazing, C.I. Tell us something about your friend. Has he changed much over the years?

"Penchant for planes" is a necessary evil if one wishes to travel. As for my friend, he now lives in Texas, and his annual message keeps us up to date on his rather large family. I think one universal truth holds true for all of us, we remain the same person we were as a child. We just happen to get older - and hopefully - wiser. c.i.

Yeah, it's a beautiful song, as well.

Here's another that springs to mind. The lyrics are a poem found by a nurse in a military field hospital in the South Pacific during WWII. The author appears to have been a patient who came through at some point, but is unknown. A singer-songwriter named John Gorka came into posession of the text through a friend (I think the nurse was the friend's aunt?), and he put it to music. David Wilcox recorded it on his "Home Again" CD.


It is hard for me to sing it without choking up. That men so young gave so much--gave up so much--for the things in which they believed.

Dang....seeing as we are getting into lyrics, I should post this one again, as it is about change, and keeping in touch, and also quite sad (based on real letters):

Kilkelly, Ireland
Peter Jones

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 60, my dear and loving son John
Your good friend the schoolmaster Pat McNamara's so good
As to write these words down.
Your brothers have all gone to find work in England,
The house is so empty and sad
The crop of potatoes is sorely infected,
A third to a half of them bad.
And your sister Brigid and Patrick O'Donnell
Are going to be married in June.
Your mother says not to work on the railroad
And be sure to come on home soon.

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 70, dear and loving son John
Hello to your Mrs and to your 4 children,
May they grow healthy and strong.
Michael has got in a wee bit of trouble,
I guess that he never will learn.
Because of the dampness there's no turf to speak of
And now we have nothing to burn.
And Brigid is happy, you named a child for her
And now she's got six of her own.
You say you found work, but you don't say
What kind or when you will be coming home.

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 80, dear Michael and John, my sons
I'm sorry to give you the very sad news
That your dear old mother has gone.
We buried her down at the church in Kilkelly,
Your brothers and Brigid were there.
You don't have to worry, she died very quickly,
Remember her in your prayers.
And it's so good to hear that Michael's returning,
With money he's sure to buy land
For the crop has been poor and the people
Are selling at any price that they can.

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 90, my dear and loving son John
I guess that I must be close on to eighty,
It's thirty years since you're gone.
Because of all of the money you send me,
I'm still living out on my own.
Michael has built himself a fine house
And Brigid's daughters have grown.
Thank you for sending your family picture,
They're lovely young women and men.
You say that you might even come for a visit,
What joy to see you again.

Kilkelly, Ireland, 18 and 92, my dear brother John
I'm sorry that I didn't write sooner to tell you that father passed on.
He was living with Brigid, she says he was cheerful
And healthy right down to the end.
Ah, you should have seen him play with
The grandchildren of Pat McNamara, your friend.
And we buried him alongside of mother,
Down at the Kilkelly churchyard.
He was a strong and a feisty old man,
Considering his life was so hard.
And it's funny the way he kept talking about you,
He called for you in the end.
Oh, why don't you think about coming to visit,
We'd all love to see you again.

Scrat and Cav.

Be it a silent cry; an obvious spate of tears; or just a winsome far off look, nothing is better for mending the soul than remembering through lyric and song.

I know Cav is Canadian, Scrat. Are you Irish?I'm not certain why I ask. There is just something faintly reminiscent........................................

My ancestors were Scotsmen.

Scrat, No Scotwomen? c.i.

"Scotsmen" is not a gender-specific term.

I know Scrat has been referred to as a rat, but you look more like a Bandicoot to me...perhaps with some ring-tailed lemur in the family...

A "Scrat" is a sabre-toothed squirrel. This specific Scrat is the last of his breed.

Well then, that explains it....

Thank ye, Scrat; learn something new "almost" every day. c.i.

So all the other scrats have been 'kilt'? Heh heh....couldn't resist...