I just realized I forgot the big name nightmare fuel of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est," which my high school Latin teacher read to us senior year when we had just been reading Horace. It was my introduction to Owen. It was terrible to hear. But someone still was yelling out and stumbling / And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.— Nothing of the aftermath is as bad as that image of unrescuable terror, because it describes someone dying and knowing it, even if the brutally physical last verse leaves them still alive. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. It's like radiation, the demon of the next war: struggling to get out of something that has already killed you.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2023-09-25 09:11 pm (UTC)I just realized I forgot the big name nightmare fuel of Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est," which my high school Latin teacher read to us senior year when we had just been reading Horace. It was my introduction to Owen. It was terrible to hear. But someone still was yelling out and stumbling / And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.— Nothing of the aftermath is as bad as that image of unrescuable terror, because it describes someone dying and knowing it, even if the brutally physical last verse leaves them still alive. In all my dreams before my helpless sight, / He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. It's like radiation, the demon of the next war: struggling to get out of something that has already killed you.