Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, July 11th, 2004.

Today's poem is called Picture Show, and it's by Siegfried Sassoon. Born 1886, died in 1967, a notable British war poet, which will be irrelevant detail in a few minutes.

I'll read the poem once, say a few things, and then read it one more time.

Here is Picture Show.

And still they come and go, and this is all I know,

that from the gloom I watch an endless picture show,

or wild or listless faces flicker on their way,

with glad or grievous hearts I'll never understand,

because time spins so fast,

and they've no time to stay beyond the moment's gesture of a lifted hand. And still between the shadow and the blinding flame,

the brave despair of men flings onward, ever the same as in those doomlit years that wait

them and have been. And life is just the picture dancing on a screen.

There's a lot going on in this little poem, comparatively little poem.

It was written in 1920 and seems to be dealing with the aftermath of the First World War.

And the language or image of watching a movie is both literal and allegorical or metaphorical here.

So the metaphor serves to describe the poet's own experience in remembering

those he lost or those that he saw die in war. The brave despair of men flings onward ever the same as in those doomlit years that wait them and have been.

And so there is this dual reality.

He's seeing the reels of these faces played over and over as they are expectant of a doom to come,

but then also in his own present day, that doom has come and gone.

The events of the war have already transpired.

But each time he recalls these friends, they, it takes him back to a moment in which

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