Jordan's+Favourite+Poem


 * __Poems - OpenshawExposure by Wilfred Owen__**

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us... Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent... Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient... Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens. Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire. Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles. Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war. What are we doing here? The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow... We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy. Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray, But nothing happens. Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow, With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew, We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance, But nothing happens. Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces - We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses. Is it that we are dying? Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there; For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs; Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed - We turn back to our dying. Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit. For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, For love of God seems dying. To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us, Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp. The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp, Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens.

The meaning that I make from the poem Exposure by Wilfred Owen is that the poem is set in a war period, and that a group of Soliders are at the front line. It is winter and the Soliders are really cold and also that the Soliders are waiting for something to happen because in the poem it is always saying 'But nothing happens'. Wilfred Owen is 'Exposing' us to the harshness of trench warfare and it is saying that in the trenches there are no protection for the soliders as they are 'Exposed'.
 * __The Meaning I make from Exposure__**

Wilfred Own was born on the 18th of March 1893 in Oswestry (United Kingdom). He was the eldest of 4 children and was brought up in the Anglican Religion. He moved Bordeaux (France) in 1913 as a teacher of English. He then signed up in the Artists Rifles on the 21th of October 1915, and then did a 14 month training exercise in England. He was then drafted to France in 1917 and took part in 'the worst winter war'. He spent 5 weeks out of 4 months on the front line. This is were most of Owen's poems were based. Owen died 7 days before the war ended in what was later called 'one of the last vain battles of the war.
 * __Context of the Author__**