"...the true poets must be truthful." Wilfred Owen

ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

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 goodbyes.
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.


Wilfred Owen

************************************

This poem which featured well in the film version of Regeneration,
is considered by many to be Owen's greatest poem about war.


THE PARABLE OF THE OLD MAN AND THE YOUNG

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven;
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.


But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.



Wilfred Owen

*************************************************

STRANGE MEETING

(1917)

It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot- wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

'I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . .'

Wilfred Owen

We need people like Frost

In the Leupold Scope
by Brian Turner



With a 40X60mm spotting scope
I traverse the Halabjah skyline,
scanning rooftops two thousand meters out
to find a woman in sparkling green, standing
among antennas and satellite dishes,
hanging laundry on an invisible line.

She is dressing the dead, clothing them
as they wait in silence, the pigeons circling
as fumestacks billow a noxious black smoke.
She is welcoming them back to the dry earth,
giving them dresses in tangerine and teal,
woven cotton shirts dyed blue.

She waits for them to lean forward
into the breeze, for the wind's breath
to return the bodies they once had,
women with breasts swollen by milk,
men with shepherd-thin bodies, children
running hard into the horizon's curving lens.


Brian Turner. Here, Bullet. Farmington: Alice James Books, 2005.


About the author

Brian Turner, recently featured on The News Hours with Jim Lehrer, earned an M.F.A from the University of Oregon and lived in South Korea for a year before serving for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq beginning November 2003, with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he had been deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division. His poetry has appeared in many journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. Turner's first collection, Here, Bullet, published this fall by Alice James Books, is powerfully affecting poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty and skill. The New York Times Book Review selected it as an Editor's Choice, admiring the book for its fierce "attention to the terrors as well as to the beauty of ruins." In a New Yorker profile, Turner explained that "when given time to sleep after a mission, I would often use a red lens flashlight (to avoid disturbing other exhausted soldiers) and either work on a poem or write in my journal about the day's events." Certainly there is a kind of infra-red vision and a delicately expressed derangement evident in the poems which, as he says, were born of "the struggle to preserve something of value from what seems to be the inexorable pull of loss."

edited from ; http://www.blueflowerarts.com/bturner.html


more here:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/poet_turner.html

A Dead Boche WWI

To you who'd read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I'll say (you've heard it said before)
"War's Hell!" and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:

Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.

Robert Graves

A Man of Few Words WWII

Black eyed Corporal Farrell
was a man of few words other
than the usual Anglo-Saxons
sprinkled around the barrackrooms
and camps. he had no words
for the ragged shrapnel slicing
through his knee-caps but
used his morphia and that was that.

We sat side by side in the sun,
for "Lightning never strikes twice
in the same place" I had said.
Side by side wishing the frank
sharp crack and slap of shrapnel
would cease and leave us be.

He might have dreamt of England
and some soft hospital bed. I don't
know, and we just waited. And then
a sniper's bullet holed his head.
He looked at me reproachfully and barked
"F*ck!"

Melville Hardiment

I read this for the first time today - incredable




Before Action WWI

By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening's benison,
By that last sunset touch that lay
Upon the hills where day was done,
By beauty lavisghly outpoured
And blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that I have lived
Make me a solider, Lord.
By all of man's hopes and fears,
And all the wonders poets sing,
The laughter of unclouded years,
And every sad and lovely thing;
By the romantic ages stored
With high endeavor that was his,
By all his mad catastrophes
Make me a man, O Lord.
I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of Thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say goodbye to all of this;-
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.

WN Hodgson

wow- like this a lot



German Prisoners of War - WWII

In a courtyard of the shelled farm they stand
The dusty mirrors of defeated eyes
Obscurring those proud days of fierce "Sieg Heils!"
They droop, dispirited, parched of all hope,
Their faces black with battered Europe's dust,
Dark with prophecy of hearts' forebodings.
Against the crumbling walls their arms are stacked,
Neat mounds, packages of surrendered death.
Our guns, now mute, mime articulation,
Persuasive signposts to captivity.
"Ou est le Boche?" is chalked upon our truck,
Releasing Belgian shouts and plausive hands.
We sway our victor's way through the faint light:
They say we'll be in Antwerp for tonight.

WG Holloway


German prisoners of war after fierce fighting

The picture above is from WWI - but I don't think that really matters - the trauma is the same

As well as editing editions of his poems Jon Stallworthy also wrote a very readable biography of Wilfred Owen in which the original source for Dulce et decorum est was traced to Owen's anger at reading a jingoistic poem in the newspaper by a woman immured from the realities of trench warfare by the way the war was reported as well as the fact that she knew she would never have to go herself.

I wouldn't quote the offending poem [although it is quoted in the Stallworthy biog] even if I could find it but seem to remember it contained lines like "Who has the stomach for a fight and who is going to stay at home?", reducing the war to almost a playground mentality of our courage against theirs, whilst Owen and co were out there amongst the reality of the gas attacks and the frostbite and the futility of all those lives lost for a few acres of muddy "no man's land".

I suppose the English literature owes the woman a debt of gratitude, really, but I can't help resenting her horrible and ignorant poem even over this distant of time...but then people who encourage others to fight from the safety of the sidelines have always annoyed me...

Agreed

I think the white feather token was sinister in its manipulation of a man's image of himself. The cowardice allegations are still slung around today as a psychological tool for keeping control, but as evidence amasses from war veterans and the trauma seen in today's world presents itself no differently than that experienced in WWI, people will have to face the facts of what war really does to the mind (not to mention the body), from the most hardened Marine to an eighteen year old boy (and I mean boy) with one years training under his belt.

I just wonder, how many years, how many battles, how many dead, traumatised and disabled, before those that sit comfortably at home beating the drum, wake up to a stark reality - war is brutal and exceedingly primitive. It doesn't matter if you're using high tech weaponry or a spiked club - men killing men, killing people, is barbaric and senseless. If we really want to be the best we can, we have to put an end to the fighting and concentrate on saving the planet we live on.

But until political power is taken from the few and given to the many, there will always be another soldier to write the next Dulce et decorum est

Thanks for the input Tino


Peace,
Endy

That was a inspired reply Endy,

Better than my post warranted, methinks.

I agree about the white feather, but it applies to all sorts of walks of life like the boxer who receives fatal blows to the head whilst the crowd roars the winner on to a kayo. You would think that would cure them [the audience, the roarers on] and make them abashed but no, it's dismissed as an unusual tradegy...and the beat goes on.

I want to have an inspired direction to take the thread onto another dimension but the only think that occurs to me again relates to the brill Stalworthy biog when he describes a childhood experience where the family had gone for a walk and Wilfred's younger brother ended up with flowers all over his shoes [too drunk to find it in Owen's inimitable words] and then the way this image of whitened shoes came up in one of Owen's tragic, suffering poems about soldiers on the march, much later. [Gulfs later in terms of his life-experience, anyway]

A real juxtaposition of innocence and the destruction of innocence as poignantly done as anything I know in English lit [even if you had to have had the background information to appreciare it].

Sorry that I can't offer more.

I love Wilfred Owen. What a poet he might have grown into if he had survived the war!

Rupert Brooke's poem 'The Soldier' is often criticised for its romantic view of a soldier's death. It is true that the poem remains a favourite of both the military and the church. No doubt a soldier's family can take comfort from its sentiment - although some see it as propaganda.
Owen had a copy of the poem and had written a fragment of a response before his death.
Here are both works:



The Soldier
Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.





[AN IMPERIAL ELEGY]
Wilfred Owen
(Fragment)

Not one corner of a foreign field
But a span as wide as Europe;
An appearance of a titan's grave,
And the length thereof a thousand miles,
It crossed all Europe like a mystic road,
Or as the Spirits' Pathway lieth on the night
And I heard a voice crying
This is the Path of Glory.

**********************************

I have heard 'The Soldier' read out loud in such a way as to bring a lump to the throat - despite its message

But Owen's response is immediately gripping in its sincerity.
As you say - I wonder what he would have given the world - had he had his chance?

Thanks for your input Tino and cumulus- it's very motivating.

Great thread, Endymion, thanks.
Also thanks to Tino and cumulus.

Never really read too much in the way of Sassoon, but I've always had a high regard for the works of Wifred Owen.

I've learned a hell of a lot on A2K, over the past day or so.

"The Soldier" is a good poem - I've not read anything else by Rupert Brooke to match it's rhymic eloquence and inspired qualities - but it brings up the question of moral goodness against technical goodness. Sorry, I don't mean to get all philosophical here.

Can you enjoy a good poem if it's sentiments do not appeal to you? Can we separate a writer's qualities from his beliefs?

I don't think you can but it's a little unfair to make moral judgements on Brooke's jingoism because he just didn't live long enough into the war to see the things that Owen saw [dying of a foreign fever before he saw any action] and who knows what his responses to that might have been. Brooke had enormous promise. It's just unfortunate that he was cut off before he had a chance to get a realistic look at the war and to respond honestly to it and that his best poem was inspired by an attitude rather than by a real experience. Stallworthy tells us that Owen's attitude was virtually identical to Brooke's before he experienced the war at first-hand.

Like Ellpus I never had much time for Sassoon [infact I prefer his prose - his war diaries are well worth reading] and it seems that Owen was pretty much out there in a league of his own in the talent stakes {although I like Isaac Rosenburg's work - what little there is of it [another talent cut down by WW1] - and I acknowledge the talent of Robert Graves, it's just that his talent didn't really blossom until quite a while after the war, which only beggars the question that Cumulus asks, what might Brooke, Owen & Rosenburg have achieved if they had survived the war!].

Sorry to go on abit...Er, no, actually, I'm not. I bloody enjoyed that!

Great thread, Endy!

Nice one, Tino.

Thankyou Mr Ellpus!

Is anybody familiar with the work of the second world war poet Keith Douglas? Described by George MacBeth thus: "His characteristic note is one of a detached, sophisticated interest in the violence and horror of the war. This contrasts his poetry sharply with Wilfred Owen's".

How to kill

Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell into my hand, it sang
in the closed fist:Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill.

Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hears

and look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the waves of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.

The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.

Tunisia-Cairo, 1943.