Found Poems | world-war-1

All Quiet On The Western Front Found Poem 1

By: Arman

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. (88)

We had no definite plans for our future. (21)

We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character. (21)

The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces. (13)

***

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men - I believe we are lost. (123)

We agree that it's the same for everyone. It is the common fate of our generation. (87)

All my generation is experiencing these things with me. (Page 263)

We are none of us more than twenty years old. But young? Youth? That is long ago. We are old folk. (18)

I cannot find my way back. (172)

Their lies a gulf between that time and today. (168)

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Our faces are neither paler nor more flushed than usual--and yet they are changed. (54)

We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. (87)

We believe in such things no longer, we believe in war. (88)

Now I see that I have been crushed without knowing it. (168)

I find I do not belong here any more, it is a foreign world. (168)

***

The blood beneath my skin brings fear and restlessness into my thoughts. (123)

Am I crying? I put my hand to my eyes, it is so fantastic; am I a child? (60)

The child-like cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life grows peacefully into silence. (287)

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, and fear. (263)

Then I know nothing more. (291)

All Quiet On The Western Front Found Poem 2

By: Advait

We always see it too late (223)

The first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world

as they had taught it to us broke in pieces (13)

We cannot burden ourselves with feelings which, though they may be ornamental

enough in peacetime, would be out of place here (139)

By the animal instinct that is awakened in us we are led and protected (56)

For death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it (Epigraph)

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We always see it too late (223)

Comrade, I did not want to kill you. . . .

We have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony (223)

We are here to protect our fatherland

And the French are over there to protect their fatherland

Now who's in the right? (203)

***

We always see it too late (223)

We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will;

but they did everything to knock that out of us (22)

We are not youth any longer (87)

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces (88)

Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades - words, words, but they hold the horror of the world (132)

***

We always see it too late (223)

I am only twenty years old, yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear,

and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow (263)

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost (123)

[Ultimately], we are left a generation of men who, even though they may have

escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. (Epigraph)

What shall happen afterwards, what shall come out of us? (264)