Some Desperate Glory (23 page)

      Watch how her wry lips move,

And guess that the poor words they frame

Mean nought, for they would speak the same

Message I read in the dark flame

      Within her eyes, which say, ‘I love.'

           
But I can only turn away …

 

I, that have heard the deep voice break

Into a sing-song sobbing shake,

Whose flutter made my being quake,

      What ears have I for women's cries?

I, that have seen the turquoise glaze

Fixed in the blue and quivering gaze

Of one whom cocaine cannot daze,

      How can I yield to women's eyes?

           
I, who can only turn away.

 

I, that have held strong hands which palter,

Borne the full weight of limbs that falter,

Bound live flesh on the surgeon's altar,

      What need have I of woman's hand?

I, that have felt the dead's embrace;

I, whose arms were his resting-place;

I, that have kissed a dead man's face;

      Ah, but how should you understand?

           
Now I can only turn away.

R
OBERT
N
ICHOLS

 

 

Through These Pale Cold Days

Through these pale cold days

What dark faces burn

Out of three thousand years,

And their wild eyes yearn,

 

While underneath their brows

Like waifs their spirits grope

For the pools of Hebron again –

For Lebanon's summer slope.

 

They leave these blond still days

In dust behind their tread

They see with living eyes

How long they have been dead.

I
SAAC
R
OSENBERG

 

 

Exposure

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us …

Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent …

Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient …

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

                   But nothing happens.

 

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

                   What are we doing here?

 

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow …

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of grey,

                   But nothing happens.

 

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew;

We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,

                   But nothing happens.

 

Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces –

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

                   – Is it that we are dying?

 

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

Shutters and doors, all closed: on us the doors are closed, –

                   We turn back to our dying.

 

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

                   For love of God seems dying.

 

To-night, this frost will fasten on this mud and us,

Shrivelling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying-party, picks and shovels in shaking grasp,

Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,

                   But nothing happens.

W
ILFRED
O
WEN

 

 

Dawn on the Somme

Last night rain fell over the scarred plateau,

And now from the dark horizon, dazzling, flies

Arrow on fire-plumed arrow to the skies,

Shot from the bright arc of Apollo's bow;

And from the wild and writhen waste below,

From flashing pools and mounds lit one by one,

Oh, is it mist, or are these companies

Of morning heroes who arise, arise

With thrusting arms, with limbs and hair aglow,

Toward the risen god, upon whose brow

Burns the gold laurel of all victories,

Hero and heroes' god, th' invincible Sun?

R
OBERT
N
ICHOLS

 

 

Arms and the Boy

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade

How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;

Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;

And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

 

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-leads

Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.

Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth

Are sharp with sharpness of grief and death.

 

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.

There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;

And God will grow no talons at his heels,

Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

W
ILFRED
O
WEN

 

 

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?

W
ILFRED
O
WEN

 

 

Preface

This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.

 

Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion or power, except War.

 

Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.

 

My subject is War, and the pity of War.

 

The Poetry is in the pity.

Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory.

 

They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.

 

(If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives – survives Prussia – my ambition and those names will have achieved fresher fields than Flanders…)

W
ILFRED
O
WEN

 

 

A Terre

(Being the philosophy of many Soldiers.)

Sit on the bed; I'm blind, and three parts shell.

Be careful; can't shake hands now; never shall.

Both arms have mutinied against me, – brutes.

My fingers fidget like ten idle brats.

 

I tried to peg out soldierly, – no use!

One dies of war like any old disease.

This bandage feels like pennies on my eyes.

I have my medals? – Discs to make eyes close.

My glorious ribbons? – Ripped from my own back

In scarlet shreds. (That's for your poetry book.)

 

A short life and a merry one, my buck!

We used to say we'd hate to live dead-old, –

Yet now … I'd willingly be puffy, bald,

And patriotic. Buffers catch from boys

At least the jokes hurled at them. I suppose

Little I'd ever teach a son, but hitting,

Shooting, war, hunting, all the arts of hurting.

Well, that's what I learnt, – that, and making money.

 

Your fifty years ahead seem none too many?

Tell me how long I've got? God! For one year

To help myself to nothing more than air!

One Spring! Is one too good to spare, too long?

Spring wind would work its own way to my lung,

And grow me legs as quick as lilac-shoots.

 

My servant's lamed, but listen how he shouts!

When I'm lugged out, he'll still be good for that.

Here in this mummy-case, you know, I've thought

How well I might have swept his floors for ever.

I'd ask no nights off when the bustle's over,

Enjoying so the dirt. Who's prejudiced

Against a grimed hand when his own's quite dust,

Less live than specks that in the sun-shafts turn,

Less warm than dust that mixes with arms' tan?

I'd love to be a sweep, now, black as Town,

Yes, or a muckman. Must I be his load?

 

O Life, Life, let me breathe, – a dug-out rat!

Not worse than ours the lives rats lead –

Nosing along at night down some safe rut,

They find a shell-proof home before they rot.

Dead men may envy living mites in cheese,

Or good germs even. Microbes have their joys,

And subdivide, and never come to death.

Certainly flowers have the easiest time on earth.

‘I shall be one with nature, herb, and stone,'

Shelley would tell me. Shelley would be stunned:

The dullest Tommy hugs that fancy now.

‘Pushing up daisies' is their creed, you know.

 

To grain, then, go my fat, to buds my sap,

For all the usefulness there is in soap.

D'you think the Boche will ever stew man-soup?

Some day, no doubt, if …

Friend, be very sure

I shall be better off with plants that share

More peaceably the meadow and the shower.

Soft rains will touch me, – as they could touch once,

And nothing but the sun shall make me ware.

Your guns may crash around me. I'll not hear;

Or, if I wince, I shall not know I wince.

 

Don't take my soul's poor comfort for your jest.

Soldiers may grow a soul when turned to fronds,

But here the thing's best left at home with friends.

 

My soul's a little grief, grappling your chest,

To climb your throat on sobs; easily chased

On other sighs and wiped by fresher winds.

 

Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned

To do without what blood remained these wounds.

W
ILFRED
O
WEN

 

 

Disabled

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,

And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,

Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park

Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,

Voices of play and pleasure after day,

Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

 

About this time Town used to swing so gay

When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,

And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, –

In the old times, before he threw away his knees.

Now he will never feel again how slim

Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands.

All of them touch him like some queer disease.

 

There was an artist silly for his face,

For it was younger than his youth, last year.

Now, he is old; his back will never brace;

He's lost his colour very far from here,

Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,

And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race

And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

 

One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,

After the matches, carried shoulder-high.

It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,

He thought he'd better join. – He wonders why.

Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts,

That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,

Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts

He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;

Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.

 

Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,

And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears

Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts

For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;

And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;

Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.

And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

 

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.

Only a solemn man who brought him fruits

Thanked
him; and then enquired about his soul.

 

Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,

And do what things the rules consider wise,

And take whatever pity they may dole.

Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes