This poem is part of an anthology called "101 Poems Against War," and I like it because it that for me, it doesn't just resonate with me, it lands (like Strange Fruit, by Billy Holiday did when I read it), in particular because although the poem's title suggests that it was written in response to the Great War (WWI), it has a lot of validity today, in particular to the economic crisis and Prop 8 (only I hope the end of the poem isn't an unwitting prediction) - read, ponder and discuss.

MCMXIV - Philip Larkin

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;

And the countryside not caring;
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses.
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence
Never before or since
As changed itself to past
Without a word - the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer;
Never such innocence again.