War Poems | Poemist

Popular War Poems

Boots

by Rudyard Kipling

INFANTRY COLUMNS

We're foot--slog--slog--slog--sloggin' over Africa --
Foot--foot--foot--foot--sloggin' over Africa --
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)
There's no discharge in the war!

Seven--six--eleven--five--nine-an'-tw enty mile to-day --
Four--eleven--seventeen--thirty-two the day before --
(Boots--boots--boots--boots--movin' up an' down again!)

......

Translation Of Petrarch's Rima, Sonnet 134

by Sir Thomas Wyatt

I FIND no peace, and all my war is done;
I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;
I fly above the wind, yet can I not arise;
And nought I have, and all the world I seize on;
That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison
And holdeth me not, yet can I 'scape nowise;
Nor letteth me live nor die at my device,
And yet of death it giveth none occasion.
Withouten eyen, I see; and without tongue I plain;
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;

......

Ukraine 2023

by Richard Randolph

I want to live in a world in which people won't tolerate
the murdering of innocent women and children,
where they'll insist it stop immediately,
without compromise, whatever the costs,
and where the leaders of the free world won't turn a blind eye
because Russia has oil or they're afraid of nuclear war,
but act on principle, with the courage of their convictions.
And I want to believe in an American public willing to stand for what is right,
however expensive, inconvenient, or far away,
and a NATO alliance determined to defend

......

War Photograph

by Kate Daniels

A naked child is running
along the path toward us,
her arms stretched out,
her mouth open,
the world turned to trash
behind her.

She is running from the smoke
and the soldiers, from the bodies
of her mother and little sister

......

Exposure

by Wilfred Owen

I

1 Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us ...
2 Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...
3 Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...
4 Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
5 But nothing happens.

6 Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
7 Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

......

Recent War Poems

A land without earthquakes

by Sanja Atanasovska

The swing on which I sit

is rising over a precipice.

I notice another death

and the grandeur

of all the evening chandeliers is breaking.

......

Країна без землетрусів

by Sanja Atanasovska

Гойдалки, на яких я сиджу,
хитаються над прірвою.
Помічаю ще одну смерть,
і велич розбивається
в усіх вечірніх люстрах.
Спалили вірменські церкви,
а в Україні окупанти
затягували чорні пов’язки
на очі людства.

......

Message from the Cathedral

by Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Between the altar
and the belfry of the village cathedral,
an ancestral differenceꓽ age-long toll of the bell
and
historic quiet —
all to measure the heartbeat of man
and ascertain the valour in him.
It's wartime, we are sadly reminded!
The sounds of bombs come with both
Heart-cracking noise and necropolis-silence.

......

The War must end - Ukraine vs Russia

by Dr. Robert Ippaso

When is enough enough,
When is the going just too tough.
Why do people have to die
Forever in the ground to lie.

Are the spoils worth all the pain
When the path is kill and maim.
Is barren land worth just so much
Now deprived of human touch.

......

Eyes

by matthew ramsey

Even through war
Slitting throats
Taking lives

Death
So much death
Yet you are ever lonely

Through the parties
The deaths you caused

......