pause...

...to remember the centenary of Armistice.

And as I was driving home from a sun blessed weekend, on the radio was a Wilfred Owen poem  'Anthem for Doomed Youth'.
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
      — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
      Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
      Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
      And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
      Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
      The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Owen was 25 when he died a week before the end of World War1 and the short film 'I Was a Dark Star Always' by Philip Hoare a fine tribute.