Today's Poetry 180 selection, The End and the Beginning, contrasts those who must clean up after war with those who forget the devastation over time:
Those who knew what was going on here must make way for those who know little. And less than little. And finally as little as nothing.
To help students understand the human toll of wars around the world, there are perhaps thousands of images in Library of Congress collections filled with lines of refugees, cities destroyed, and the clean-up work following wars described in the poem. I can envision an "Aftermath of War" project here that builds still more understanding of the aftermath of war, both historically and currently. Groups of students could pick a conflict and practice their loc.gov keyword search skills to find images, although many are available at the Library only. That's when a copy description/title and paste into Google workaround may be needed.
Searching the ruins, "somewhere in France"
https://www.loc.gov/item/2015652159/
Bomb wrecked houses, Yarmouth
https://www.loc.gov/item/2014698353/
6 - 8 9 - 12 Social Studies/History war poetry English/Language Arts
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Thank you, 
Mary Johnson
, for this excellent suggestion of an "Aftermath of War" project. There is also support here for times in the curriculum when we must deal with
Difficult topics
or
Sensitive topics
.
Edited
Mary, this seems like a great project! I wanted to add a variation of this activity that I have done with students in my classroom. After reading and analyzing poetry using what I like to call TRP-FASTT, students use primary sources to create a Visual Annotation of the poem.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RwMJ-t0IqbIJNDFSnWgnWi-DHgEb_BrhamP3dIF3Nlk/edit#slide=id.p3
On each slide, students will include a primary source that supports/illustrates the lines of the poem, and then explain the connection between those lines and the primary source that used.
What a powerful visual annotation idea and example! Thanks for sharing, 
Bridget Morton
.
Fantastic idea--thanks so much for sharing!
Love the poem and the idea!
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