Goethe once said that the less accessible a work is to the intellect the greater it is<\/p>\n
For many years during that terrible war I tried to understand his thoughts<\/p>\n
If anything to make sense of the slaughter that surrounded me on a daily basis<\/p>\n
I woke up every morning expecting to die but found that only a small death had overtaken me<\/p>\n
But is all over now I returned in one piece physically to a country fit for heroes<\/p>\n
Yet I had changed as I needed isolation my wonderful parents understood that<\/p>\n
They arranged that I should live in a church tower until my faculties returned<\/p>\n
My tiny room is full of poems written by doomed poets to mothers daughters sisters and friends<\/p>\n
In most of the poems these ordinary soldiers know that they will not return<\/p>\n
It is a simple poetry of longing of memories spent and hollow futures<\/p>\n
I have not read them all as they pain me as I survived just like my dog Dakota<\/p>\n
She was there when I left for war and greeted me when I returned<\/p>\n
I can see her freely in the garden from my window a collie full of life<\/p>\n
Although I have isolated myself I welcome a small number of visitors<\/p>\n
They will help me recover with walks in the fields of butterflies<\/p>\n
Although this war has ceased I feel that another war is possible<\/p>\n
And have under my own conditions decided to search for the light<\/p>\n
It may take a day or it may take years or never happen at all<\/p>\n
My residence can be accessed from the tower undercroft<\/p>\n
There is a flight of frail wooden steps and I leave a candle burning for your safety<\/p>\n
My isolation has kept visitors to a minimum but feel welcome all I ask is that you write to me<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
G.A.Stephens<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Goethe once said that the less accessible a work is to the intellect the greater it is For many years during that terrible war I tried to understand his thoughts If anything to make sense of the slaughter that surrounded me on a daily basis I woke up every morning expecting to die but found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9365"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9373,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9365\/revisions\/9373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuartmillerosborne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}