Hi, I'm Andrew Kern, sitting in for David Kern.

I'm going to read a poem today by Wilfred Owen called Dolce et Decorum Est, and if you're

a little squeamish, I think perhaps you should be careful about who you let listen to this poem.

It's a World War I poem, and it's rather descriptive.

Dolce et decorum est, Wilfred Owen.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks.

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags we cursed through sludge,

till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

and towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep.

Many had lost their boots but limped on bloodshod.

All went lame, all blind, drunk with fatigue,

deaf even to the hoots of tired, outstripped five nines that dropped behind.

Gas, gas, quick, boys!

An ecstasy of fumbling, fitting the clumsy helmet's just in time.

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling and floundering like a man in fire or lime.

Dimmed through the misty panes and thick green light as under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace behind the wagon that we flung him in

and watch the white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face like a devil's sick of sin,

if you could hear at every jolt the blood come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs, obscene

as cancer, bitter as the cut of vile and curable sores on innocent tongues.

...