FREDERIC EBRIGHT

"On the Eve of Peace" by Watts

LEGACY

Wars end, and men come back from them
into another world not of their knowing,
and strangers they to their own blood and bone
who remember them before their going;

dumb with what knowledge, blinded by what light
of strange ways and dreams, and alien-speaking;
sit they thus and stare beyond the hills
or, lost, walk restlessly, forever seeking

that time they knew, the place, the word;
as children tricked by a conjurer's illusion,
Children, with puzzled eyes, and oddly old,
confused at their own sad confusion.

Written by Frederick Ebright

From the book, "The New Treasury of War Poetry (WWII)"