Death

Ozymandias

The statue was sculpted with the intention of immortalising Ozymandias.

‘Half sunk, a shattered visage lies’
‘survive, stamped on these lifeless things’
‘Nothing beside remains.’
‘decay Of that colossal wreck’

London

Many people died, as a result of the war and disease, during the late 1700’s.

‘blood down Palace walls’
‘plagues the Marriage hearse’

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Approximately, 110 soldiers were killed, during the Battle of Balaclava. They followed orders and sacrificed their lives for their country:

‘ “Charge for the guns!” ’
‘Into the valley of Death’
‘Theirs but to do and die.’
‘Into the jaws of Death’
‘Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred’
‘While horse and hero fell.’

Exposure

Soldiers face perilous conditions whilst fighting at war:

‘merciless iced east winds the knife us…’
‘twitching agonies of men among its brambles’
‘deadly… air that shudders black with snow’
‘Slowly our ghosts drag home’
‘We turn back to our dying’
‘frost will fasten on this mud and us’
All their eyes are ice’

Bayonet Charge

Although this soldier’s outcome is ambiguous, death is experienced within nature:

‘Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame’
‘mouth wide Open silent, its eyes standing out.’

Remains

The soldier’s involvement with the murder of the looter haunts him:

‘I see every round as it rips through his life-‘
‘I see broad daylight on the other side’
‘we’ve hit this looter a dozen times’
‘he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out’
‘tosses his guts back into his body’
‘he’s carted off in the back of a lorry’
‘His blood-shadow stays on the street’
‘he’s torn apart by a dozen rounds’
‘not left for dead in some distant…land’
‘his bloody life in my bloody hands

Poppies

It is ambiguous as to whether or not the son has died but there are many details to suggest that he has:

‘poppies had already been placed on individual war graves’
‘spasm of paper red’
‘After you’d gone I… released a song bird’
‘skirting the church yard walls’
‘I traced the inscriptions on the war memorial’
‘I listened hoping to hear your playground voice’

War Photographer

The photographer captures a distressing image of a man and his wife who are injured in a war-torn land:

‘spools of suffering set out in ordered rows’
‘The only light is red and softly glows’
‘though this were a church and he a priest’
‘A stranger’s features faintly start to twist’
‘a half-formed ghost’
‘blood stained into foreign dust’

Kamikaze

The pilot should have sacrificed his life on a suicide mission, along with his other comrades. When he returned home, his existence was bleak:

‘enough fuel for a one-way journey into history’
‘built cairns of pearl- grey pebbles’
‘they treated him as though he no longer existed’
‘to live as though he had never returned’
‘must have wondered which had been the better way to die’