“The lamps are going out…”

Tonight I will be turning out our lights from 10pm – 11pm. “The lamps are going out all over Europe… we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” (Sir Edward Grey, August 1914)

I tried to find words. None came.

A century on and the irony of the headlines do not escape me. On the one hand, commemorations and remembrance of the 37 million dead in the war to end all wars. On the other, a mounting pressure for bloodshed to end in current conflicts.

I don’t know how to find words.

I don’t feel qualified to comment, and yet, I feel compelled to speak.

But still no words come.

In their absence, I searched for someone else’s. 

What in our lives is burnt
In the fire of this?
The heart’s dear granary?
The much we shall miss?

Three lives hath one life –
Iron, honey, gold.
The gold, the honey gone –
Left is the hard and cold.

Iron are our lives
Molten right through our youth.
A burnt space through ripe fields,
A fair mouth’s broken tooth.

~ Isaac Rosenberg

(from here)