I'm so lucky to have lived my whole life so far in a time of peace. All the warfare I have seen has been remote, over there, on foreign soil. During my lifetime, these fifty years or so of extended calm, medicine and surgery and the organisation of healthcare have advanced to the point where my tumour could be removed and my life saved, with relative ease.
And I'm so lucky to live in a country where the miracles of modern medicine are accessible to people like me. Reading reams of papers about the management of cancer, I have had to remember that survival rates are affected by the place of treatment as well as the time. For example, many USA studies have poor prognoses because individuals' health insurance don't cover the surgery.
By chance I happened across a Radio 4 programme the other day, "Return to Oasis" http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nkt28 about poems from WWII. As we approach Armistice Day it seemed appropriate to share a couple of the poems. I'd give my eye's teeth to be able to write half as feelingly or eloquently. I've transcribed them from the radio broadcast, and any wrong emphasis or phrasing due to punctuation is down to me.
The first is by Wing Commander Dennis McHarrie. I'm intrigued by the line "He fought because he had to fight". Does he mean because of conscription, or morally? But mostly I thought the bitterness, the anger against the sentimentality of non-combatants, rang true. I imagine the Wing Commander saw many good men die.
The second is by Sidney Keys, who died in Tunisia in 1943 shortly before his 21st birthday. He was already a published and respected poet. His imagery is eloquent and brutal, and he had no illusions about the costs of warfare. Had he have lived, he would been around 90 now. The same age as my mum.
Luck
I suppose they’ll say his last thoughts were of simple things
Of April back at home, and a late sun on his wings.
Or that he murmured someone's name
As earth reclaimed him, sheathed in flame.
Oh God. Let’s have no more of empty words.
Lip service, ornamenting death.
The worms don’t spare the hero nor can children feed
Upon resounding praises of his deed.
“He died who loved to live” they’ll say
“Unselfishly, so we might have today”
Like Hell. He fought because he had to fight.
He died, that’s all. It was his unlucky night.
Wing Commander Dennis McHarrie
(originally untitled, the poem commemorates a friend of the poet who took up a defective plane and crashed, a plane the Wg Cdr McHarrie could well have flown himself. )
War Poet
I am the man who looked for peace and found
My own eyes barbed.
I am the man who groped for words and found
An arrow in my hand.
I am the builder whose firm walls surround
A slipping land.
When I grow sick or mad
Mock me not nor chain me:
When I reach for the wind
Cast me not down:
Though my face is a burnt book
And a wasted town.
Sidney Keys
I suppose they’ll say his last thoughts were of simple things
Of April back at home, and a late sun on his wings.
Or that he murmured someone's name
As earth reclaimed him, sheathed in flame.
Oh God. Let’s have no more of empty words.
Lip service, ornamenting death.
The worms don’t spare the hero nor can children feed
Upon resounding praises of his deed.
“He died who loved to live” they’ll say
“Unselfishly, so we might have today”
Like Hell. He fought because he had to fight.
He died, that’s all. It was his unlucky night.
Wing Commander Dennis McHarrie
(originally untitled, the poem commemorates a friend of the poet who took up a defective plane and crashed, a plane the Wg Cdr McHarrie could well have flown himself. )
War Poet
I am the man who looked for peace and found
My own eyes barbed.
I am the man who groped for words and found
An arrow in my hand.
I am the builder whose firm walls surround
A slipping land.
When I grow sick or mad
Mock me not nor chain me:
When I reach for the wind
Cast me not down:
Though my face is a burnt book
And a wasted town.
Sidney Keys
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