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.
