This is a bookmark in a book of poetry that I have taken to keeping near me lately.
The poem this is marking is actually not the one below, but was the one on the opposite side of the page.
As I read this today I seemed to notice it for the first time, though I have surely 'read' it many times before.

Funny how poetry waits for you, until you're ready to let it sink in.
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This poem is about War, and the pity of War.

Futility

Move him into the sun --
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds --
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved -- still warm -- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

-Wilfred Owen
1893-1918

Wilfred Owen was killed in battle in WWI, a few days before the armistice in November, 1918.

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On a lighter note, here is Beau, busy 'multi-tasking': http://www.pbase.com/corvidae/image/34649275
He's finished taking out my mouse and is just having himself a little wash-up in the middle of my desk.
and
"Mischief Managed": http://www.pbase.com/corvidae/image/34649278