I need help explicating my poem.?

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 good-byes.


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.

I need help explicating my poem.?
wilfred owen's poem is about the mass-slaughter of the the first world war.





poems written early in the war tended to be enthusiastic about the prospect of fighting an 'enemy'. then as the war went on poets began to ask whether there was any real point in so many young men dying.





in this poem owen talks about the way that death in war is not only brutal, but undignified.





the 'passing bell' is the church bell which is usually rung when someone has died. no bells are rung when young men die in war - they die in huge numbers, and without the dignity of a funeral ('like cattle').





there are no church bells, but there is the sound of artillery ('monstrous anger') and of rifle-fire. perhaps these sounds will do instead. ('orisons' are formalised prayers: in this case the prayers said at a funeral mass).





there are no choirs - except the singing of the artillery shells as they fly through the air - and no music except the bugle-calls.





and there are no funeral candles. or rather the 'funeral candles' are the tears in the eyes of their soldier friends who are still alive.





there is no white sheet to wrap them in. the only white thing is the face of their girlfriend when she hears that her fiancé is dead on the battle-field.





and the only real remembrance that they are dead is the way that their parents (hundreds of miles away, and in a different country) will draw the curtains closed each evening, and remember that their son will never again come home.
Reply:My advice to you is not to take advice from anyone here. Your poem is way over their heads.