This year to celebrate National Poetry Month and to take part in the April A-Z Blogging Challenge, I’ll be posting two poems a day, one written by me and another poem written by one of my favourite poets. The title or first word of both poems will begin with the corresponding letter in the Blogging Challenge.
Today I offer you a brutal war poem by Siegfried Sassoon, The Kiss, and a sensual love poem by Luccia Gray, Kiss Me.
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The Kiss BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON
To these I turn, in these I trust—
Brother Lead and Sister Steel.
To his blind power I make appeal,
I guard her beauty clean from rust.
He spins and burns and loves the air,
And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days
She glitters naked, cold and fair.
Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:
That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel
Quail from your downward darting kiss.
Sassoon said this poem was inspired by a lecture on the use of the bayonet in which the lecturer, compared the bullet and bayonet to a brother and sister. The sister/bayonet’s penetration is disturbingly compared to a fatal kiss.
Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967) was an English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War, describing the horrors of the trenches.
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From a devastating war poem, to a sensual poem by Luccia Gray, Kiss me.
Kiss Me
Soft, supple lips,
Kiss me.
Breath, life, lips,
Kiss me.
Warm, moist lips,
Kiss me.
Arms, legs, lips,
Kiss me.
Breathless, panting lips,
Kiss me.
Release, ecstasy, lips,
Kiss me.
Rest, sleep, lips,
Kiss me.
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Rereading Jane Eyre 