They’re taking Wilfred Owen off the syllabus.

They’re taking Wilfred Owen off the syllabus,

And really I shouldn’t care. Our boy’s legacy

Will persist in spite of some administrators,

Tinkering at the edge of teenage education.

–

And besides, he won’t miss the sickly nostalgia

For words grifters might have read but never understood.

This final death of the writer; as ghostly lines

Erupt in pubs— an engine revved by the Daily Mail.

–

But I can’t help feel a childish kind of loss.

Protective of enchanted objects handed down

To that boy I’ll never be again, given credit

For spinning facile meanings, while sheltered from truth.

–

Now, past his tender age, I find no faith in facts.

And those words— just as when they stomped with unknown pain—

Remain lost on me, obscured in the haze of youth:

Doomed to the glow of the past, where we still warm our hands.