1914

Introduction

Pantoum, a Malaysian poetic form in French and English. The pantoum consists of a series of quatrains rhyming abab in which the second and fourth lines of a quatrain recur as the first and third lines in the succeeding quatrain; each quatrain introduces a new second rhyme (as bcbc, cdcd).

The Pantoum is a new form for me. Like The Villanelle it has a lot of repetition to emphasise points, though the repetition is a bit less in your face.

I am not exactly sure how to approach this, but as this is post number 1914 I am going to to question why we fight wars instead of building a better world.

The music is "The Magnificent" by The One World Orchestra and The Massed Pipes And Drums Of The Children's Free Revolutionary Volunteer Guard from the 1995 "War Child" album released in aid of children displaced by War which you can still buy here

Links to help are at the end of this poem.

I will take four quatrains with XX syllables for each line, an ABAB rhyme structure with the following line structure. Not the line letters are unrelated to the rhyme structure letters.

Stanza 1

A

B

C

D

Stanza 2

B

E

D

F

Stanza 3

E

G

F

H

Stanza 4

G

A

H

C

1914

⚔️⚡☠️🔥☠️⚡⚔️

No War Will Ever Satisfy

Man's Appetite For Destruction

We Have To Build And Pacify

To Find Humankind's Salvation

☠️🔥☠️

Man's Appetite For Destruction

Millions Dead In The First World War

To Find Humankind's Salvation

Turn All Weapons Into Ploughshares

☠️🔥☠️

Millions Dead In The First World War

Then Holocaust And Nuclear Bombs

Turn All Weapons Into Ploughshares

To Build For Our Daughters And Sons

☠️🔥☠️

Then Holocaust And Nuclear Bombs

No War Will Ever Satisfy

To Build For Our Daughters And Sons

We Have To Build And Pacify

⚔️⚡☠️🔥☠️⚡⚔️

To Help Those Affected By War