crowds of ghosts among the trees

I promised war poetry, and I really like war poetry, so here we go. Heads up, this is a poem about PTSD. Sassoon wrote this poem around the time that he was hospitalized for shell shock after declining to return to duty and writing his famously dissenting letter against the war; "shell shock" was the official story—rather than a court martial, they declared him unfit for duty and sent him to hospital—but reportedly Sassoon actually just hung out in hospital in Scotland playing golf with his psychiatrist (W. H. Rivers, who gave the lecture on shell shock after which this poem is titled) and dating becoming BFFs with Wilfred Owen. I love how cutting this poem is; but then, I honestly love most things about Siegfried Sassoon.

Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame—
No, no, not that,—it’s bad to think of war,
When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.

Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,
And you’re as right as rain...
                                    Why won’t it rain?...
I wish there’d be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang their dripping heads.
Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they’re so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There’s one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,—
Not people killed in battle,—they’re in France,—
But horrible shapes in shrouds—old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,—old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

. . .

You’re quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You’d never think there was a bloody war on!...
O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft ... they never cease—
Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop—I’m going crazy;
I’m going stark, staring mad because of the guns.

—Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), "Repression of War Experience," from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918.

words are fools

I missed two days of poetry this week -- as you may have noticed -- because it has not been a good week. Going to class this morning helped; at least for that hour and a half I was focused on something outside my own head. But it's hard to concentrate, and, worse than that, it's hard to make myself care about anything. At lunch today I said to Jason that I can lay all the shittiness of how I'm feeling at the feet of grief, but that doesn't quite cut it, moment to moment, because moment to moment the most shattering thing is not caring about the things that I love the most. Knowing why I feel that way, knowing that eventually it will probably get better -- that helps, but it doesn't make it any less shattering.

There's still poetry, though, and sometimes I can even remember why I love it so much.

If you could crowd them into forty lines!
Yes; you can do it, once you get a start;
All that you want is waiting in your head,
For long-ago you’ve learnt it off by heart.
. . . .

Begin: your mind’s the room where you have slept,
(Don’t pause for rhymes), till twilight woke you early.
The window stands wide-open, as it stood
When tree-tops loomed enchanted for a child
Hearing the dawn’s first thrushes through the wood
Warbling (you know the words) serene and wild.

You’ve said it all before: you dreamed of Death,
A dim Apollo in the bird-voiced breeze
That drifts across the morning veiled with showers,
While golden weather shines among dark trees.

You’ve got your limitations; let them sing,
And all your life will waken with a cry:
Why should you halt when rapture’s on the wing
And you’ve no limit but the cloud-flocked sky?...

But some chap shouts, ‘Here, stop it; that’s been done!’—
As God might holloa to the rising sun,
And then relent, because the glorying rays
Remind Him of green-glinting Eden days,
And Adam’s trustful eyes as he looks up
From carving eagles on his beechwood cup.

Young Adam knew his job; he could condense
Life to an eagle from the unknown immense....
Go on, whoever you are; your lines can be
A whisper in the music from the weirs
Of song that plunge and tumble toward the sea
That is the uncharted mercy of our tears.
. . . .

I told you it was easy! ... Words are fools
Who follow blindly, once they get a lead.
But thoughts are kingfishers that haunt the pools
Of quiet; seldom-seen: and all you need
Is just that flash of joy above your dream.
So, when those forty platitudes are done,
You’ll hear a bird-note calling from the stream
That wandered through your childhood; and the sun
Will strike the old flaming wonder from the waters....
And there’ll be forty lines not yet begun.

—Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), 'Limitations', from Picture-Show, 1920.

storm the gates of nothingness

Just a little one, today. I swear I'm not only posting Sassoon because of all the Generation Kill -- he was on my spreadsheet! I really adore the WWI war poets; this one is also not exactly a war poem. (Still, I can probably guarantee that if I ever do end up writing Generation Kill fic, it will have a lot of Classical allusions and randomly reference Siegfried Sassoon.)

Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make the emptiness of light
A windy palace. Quavering from the brim
Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,
They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing
Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof
Whose heart’s a haunted woodland whispering;
Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing;
Who hears the cry of God in everything,
And storms the gate of nothingness for proof.

~Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), "Thrushes" from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918.

Meanwhile, I am back in bed with the internet and a cup of tea, for a while: the perfect Saturday morning. I may even be able to refrain from murdering the air-raid-siren birds outside my open window. We'll see how it goes.