WW1 and Poetry

The "poetry" of war?

Much has been written in the UK over the past few years about the Great War. The "war to end all wars". Myself, it often seems that those who fought in it, especially those who died in it, are perceived as a "special" generation. 

Without seeking to deny the depth of the sacrifices made, I tend to see - or try to see - all as "special"; and think that the unique individual human being is often lost amid "generations", special or not. Maybe just a quibble, but I always question claims of "what they died for" or "what they fought for". Just one thing filling each and every heart?

Remembrance at a local village

Each death was unique. As each wife or mother would have known on receiving the telegram or the knock on the door. Fathers too, brothers and sisters. 

Receiving the telegram

On the face of it, writing poetry seems a strange thing to do in response to the horror of war. Yet like most artistic expressions it seems it is an attempt to understand and make sense of experience; often the attempt to make others understand. It is the Tao being shared. Never divided.

I have long had an interest in WWI and this has centred upon the Western Front and life  and death in the trenches. Not to say that I know nothing of Gallipoli, the Eastern Front and a few other arenas of the conflict, but it has certainly been  what could be called "life in the trenches" that has captured my imagination. If "imagination" is really the right word. 

Once I went on a trip to Ypres and the Menin Gate. The tour also took in the Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. The sheer number of names on the Menin Gate Memorial is staggering, each one a testimony to a life lived and a  life lost. 

A view of Tyne Cot - more names

I have a fond memory of Ypres, of buying something or other in a small shop, having interrupted a conversation in the local language between another customer and the  proprietor. On the way out I was called back, "Hey, don't forget your wallet" (in perfect English) My wallet, which I had left on the counter, was handed back. Always remembered in gratitude, and the smiles on their faces. An example of just how the War has been "shared", of how so many years later the sacrifice of others  becomes "embodied". I'm told that many in Belgium still have a fondness for the English. Well, I'm drifting - though perhaps not. 

Anyway to pad out this blog, a poem or two, the first, "MCMXIV", by one of my favorite poets, Philip Larkin. Philip Larkin was born only in 1922, and so was imagining back, and in a sense seeing a watershed between "ancient" and "modern", capturing the mood that perhaps then was, of "it will all be over by Christmas", of "let's do our bit" before its over, an "August Bank Holiday lark":-

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.

"An August Bank Holiday Lark"

All a long way from those who die as cattle from "Anthem For Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen. This "Anthem" creates a contrast between a Church Service and the sacrifice (slaughter) of the soldiers. The "choirs" of wailing shells; and what of the candles found at such services? 

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

Wilfred Owen, who died in the war close to its end, also wrote "Futility":-

Move him into the sun— 

Gently its touch awoke him once, 

At home, whispering of fields half-sown. 

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?

Futility

Just to finish, with a more "uplifting" poem of Siegfried Sassoon. Not every day was a day in the trenches, nor a time of horror, "Everybody Sang":-

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

Drifted away ... O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

Well, that's it. Except perhaps a final image, of the river of Poppies flowing like blood from the Tower of London, one of the many commemorations of WWI during 2018......

Related Quotes:- 

Ah! Summer grasses!

All that remains

Of the warriors dreams

(Basho)

I, too, saw God through mud -

The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled

(Lines from "Apologia pro Poemate Meo" by Wilfred Owen)