Poem for Saturday

I Saw His Round Mouth's Crimson
By Wilfred Owen

I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.

--------

For , who pointed out that if I had posted a Siegfried Sassoon poem, I should post a Wilfred Owen poem. I had known the two men were friends and Sassoon had Owen's poems published posthumously but I did not know that Owen went to the front to take Sassoon's place when the latter was wounded.

Have just watched Kingdom of Heaven with my entire family -- the kids were supposed to be finishing their computer games and going to bed, but they got interested and since we were watching on our very ancient, small television with the crappy sound I knew that most of the details of the bloody battles, Baldwin's leprosy-ravaged face, etc. would be lost. Both sons revealed an astonishing level of knowledge about the weapons, apparently gleaned from playing Age of Empires, and were quite observant about which scenes seemed like direct riffs on Gladiator and The Two Towers. (They are familiar with nearly all the big actors in the movie -- Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, David Thewlis, Jeremy Irons, Alexander Siddig, et al -- and I hadn't noticed Kevin McKidd, who has been much more noticeable to me since Rome.) Older son also revealed quite a bit of knowledge about the situation of the Jews in the region under the Christians and Muslims respectively, not sure how much from social studies where they are doing the Middle Ages now and how much from Hebrew school. That is not a movie I had really intended to watch all the way through with the kids given the level of violence and I am not sorry that I did, though I am glad the bloodiness was so muted (and I stand by everything I said before). My initial impression that Bloom is underrated in the film continues; he holds his own onscreen with Neeson and Thewlis and is considerably better than poor Marton Csokas' overwritten and overplayed Guy de Lusignan.

Otherwise I had yummy Lebanese food and beauty shopping with whose leftover hummus I inadvertendly took home with me, wrote a review of "A Taste of Armageddon" while distracted trying to keep up with all the Takei threads (at the time I posted the article last night, neither the official site nor TrekWeb had the story up and I thought about waiting till morning to ask the site owner whether he wanted the whole personality or the inevitable "guess who came out" spin, went with my instinct and the non-sensationalistic headline and by afternoon today both those other sites and a host of others had gone with the "guess who came out" spin which made me certain I had made the right decision). Am glad I did, too, because I didn't see the site owner all day! Saturday we are planning to take our annual trip to Gambrill, Gathland and Washington Monument State Parks to see the leaves and ladybugs so I will not have a lot of time to write Trek news, so I am glad I got that done.


Seneca Schoolhouse Museum on River Road near Poolesville, Maryland taught 25 students in one room -- boys on one side, girls on the other.


It was heated by a pot-bellied stove whose coal had to be carried in by the older students. Students learned geography, grammar, arithmetic, history, some natural science...and manners.


The school closed in 1910 but now visitors and class field trips can put ink in these old inkwells and practice being students from 1865.