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Poetry Magnum Opus

familiar sabres..


Benjamin

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familiar sabres rattle

soldiers march

and weapons that are tested

slap the face of poverty

 

and I read again

the final speech of

"The Great Dictator”

that funny little man

who stood up in his time

to remind the world of hope

 

 

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Concise and to the point, but covers a lot of ground about humanity. All of us over a certain age have likely seen the Charlie Chaplin movie. What a great actor--and without sound! We need Alec Guiness back to imitate some of the mad comedic characters today.

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That final speech from the "The Great Dictator" can be read on Google.. or heard by Chaplin himself in a clip from the film on YouTube. It's well worth a few minutes of anyones time. :smile:

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slap the face of poverty

 

Seriously philosophical. I am glad you did NOT write "face of the enemy", "face of the dangerous", etc. You write truth here.

 

I have never seen that Chaplin flick, but have, of course, heard of it. I just watched the clip. Wow, again. In case people have trouble finding it, the link to that final speech in the film:

 

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Glad you took the trouble to listen to the speech dcm. I've tagged the link you provided to the bottom of my few lines.

There are many similarities in the world today reminiscent of that dark place in history. I could have written much around this subject but the Chaplin speech would always have been better. As a piece of humanitarian literature I place it alongside Max Ehrman's "Desiderata" poem.

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I have lyrics from countless songs locked away in my head. One of them.. "The Old Man's Tale" .. is a kind of biographical early anti- war song, that was written in the '60's by Scottish singer Alex Campbell after he visited and spoke to people in an old folk's home.. It contained the lines, "I wandered through the thirties out of work now and again..I saw the Blackshirts marching.. and the things they did in Spain." Surprising how many things that are happening now.. jolt half forgotten memories to the surface and become relevent all over again.

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We repeat our historical follies under different names and rubrics. I am now reading (actually audiobooking so I can listen in the car) 'The Nuremberg Trial'. Under the terms of the indictments laid down at the time President Bush and his administration and the military top brass could be accused of waging an aggressive, and in no sense pre-emptive, war in Iraq, not too dissimilar to the invasion of Poland. Vae victis.

Drown your sorrows in drink, by all means, but the real sorrows can swim

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Blair lied blatantly for Bush re WMD . Cameron's current attempts at gerrymandering our electoral system and the UK House of Lords to remain in power ..are equally distastefull and prove that nothing changes in politics. It's a dirty game played at the expense of ordinary people.

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Love the movie and the final speech. It's quite a concise little piece you've written- Those who forget history, etc. Why focus on Britain, when American Exceptionalism has led the way to creating the conditions for the rebirth of fascism across the world. Sorry, just spent a week in Florida and went to the Dream Factories of my youth- having a bit of a hrad time dealing with what has become of those Dreams;-)Enjoyed, thanks!

 

Juris

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Thanks for looking in Juris your comments are appreciated.... The easy availability of modern technology is much blamed for the way the world is being re-shaped and educated rather than good old human nature.. Just hope Nostradamus was wrong... "Beware the yellow man..." :biggrin: Benjamin.

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