Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

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Volume 7 Number 3, December 2006

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BULLETS & MUD

a stage poem inspired by Wilfred Owen

by

Per Brask

 

(November 4, 1918. Morning. The west bank of the Oise-Sambre Canal, just north of Ors.  Mud.

      Owen is caught in a sudden flash. Time slows down and he’s alone as the bullet meant for him hovers in the air.  He knows).

 

 

OWEN:

An anthem

      Minute bells, passing bells

      Solemn, no, monstrous anger

 

An anthem for dead youth

                      Dying youth

 

The priest-words, no, requiem

What candles may we hold? – Behold –

In women’s wide-spread arms

And the pallor of girls’ cheeks, no,

Brows; not in the hands of boys

Nor in their doomed youth

The tenderness of mortal minds,

Silent, patient minds

 

 

---

(He points to the bullet).

 

There’s Death waiting to shave me

                  With his scythe

 

I told my brother

I know I shall be killed

But this is the only place

That I can make my protest from

 

I came to help these boys

By leading them as well

As an officer can

By watching their sufferings

That I may speak as well

As a pleader can

 

After all the shells we’ve been through

And the gas

These bullets are a gentle rain

From heaven

 

Or, they are arrowheads of political error

And insincerity on which young men

Are being sacrificed

 

 

---

Death’s not my enemy

Though I can’t stand

The green thick odour of his breath

My enemies are those who talk

Of “attrition” and “sustaining damage”

Those whose imaginations have shrunk

To the size of a flag, those who still believe

A corpse missing half a face

Has any use of nationality

 

I have been urged by an earnest viola

To lay my chest to the ground

And submit to the pounding shells

The newest rhythm in the earth

 

 

---

I was reborn through Keats

And reared again by sweet Sassoon

But why poetry, I could not say

Except that it gives me a strange solitude

When I resort to it and stranger

Friends when I resort to them

And even if I don’t know why poetry

Or what I really want I do know

What I don’t want:

Preserve me from old women

Without wit or wisdom

Preserve me from young women

With gush and no beauty

Preserve me from women

Of beauty and no charm; but take

No measures against women of charm

And no beauty, for they are the sugar

Of the earth

Preserve me from men in waistcoats

Shirt cuffs and braces of a Sunday afternoon

Preserve me from the man who sits

In stocking feet of an evening

And scratches his big toe with his heel

Preserve me from the youth

Who carries a pencil in his right ear;

But preserve the cigarette in the ear of a Tommy

For it is his last

Preserve me from people who eat eggs

When I don’t want any

Preserve me from all ships

In glass bottles, plush chairs

Group photographs, flowers under glass

Shades and shells-pictures-frames

 

And especially preserve me

From armchair generals and politicians

Who prolong suffering for their own ends

 

 

---

Saith Mistress Browning:

          Many fervent souls

Strike rhyme on rhyme, who would strike steel on steel

If steel had offered, in a restless heat

Of doing something. Many tender hearts

Have strung their losses on a rhyming thread,

As children, cowslips. The more pains they take,

The work more withers. Young men, ay and maids,

Too often sow their wild oats in tame verse,

Before they sit down under their own vine

And live for use

 

Or words to that effect. And the effect

On me is wounding, more deeply, perhaps

Than that bullet will.

 

I determined to raise pigs after the war

I’d take a cottage in Kent, Surrey, Sussex

And give my afternoons to pigs

The abruptest possible change from a morning

Of poetry

Two boys could tend them while I wrote

And being of use and wild verse

Would be all in a day’s work

 

Somehow I must feel of use

Have a mission in life, something to do

Rooted in the world, the earth

Something real, realer than art

Though it annoys me no end

That pigs always have priority

Over poetry

 

 

---

My nerves are charred

Can you photograph the crimson-hot iron

As it cools from smelting?

That’s what Jones’ blood looked like

And felt like when he lay on top of me

Shot through the head

Soaking my shoulder

 

So, so what’s poetry – to me?

A private thrill? What was it to Jones?

 

Perhaps something about Jones

Could only come true through poetry?

Perhaps there’s something in everything – bullets and skulls and waterlogged corpses – that can only be seen in poetry;

Something in poetry that lifts the mud out of mud, making mud a document

Of terror?

 

 

---

Life’s not a theory

Has no theory

Neither does a life

My life has meaning

My meaning

Mine to struggle with

Like Jacob with the angel

When the bullet hits

My life will have a meaning

Beyond my ken

And likely different from my struggle

The meaning of my life will become

Something it is not

Yet, once I’m dead

Until then my meaning

Must become my heart

My breathing, my rhythm

And no moment is

More august than another

In this respect if I am

To live a poet’s life

Not publication, but being

Present is my calling

Present unto death

 

 

---

The thrilling part of this job

Is going over the top of a trench

Exhilarating as dreams of falling

Over a precipice, when you see

The rocks at the bottom surging up

Towards you. The exultation

Of slowly walking forward

Showing ourselves openly

Keep the line straight!

Not so fast on the left!

Not so fast!

Then the tornado of shells

Waves all broken up

And we carry on like a crowd

Moving off a cricket field

The ground wormy with wounded bodies

I feel no horror only exultation

At having got through

 

The thing about such moments

And a moment like this

Is that it defies anything

You thought you knew

There is no knowledge

To rest on; you’re alone with ignorance

Your ignorance, unless you’re in the grip

Of fear and clutch to scripture

Only to grow even more fearful

Because nothing makes sense

Sense and the senses break down

Here, the world narrows

To your breath and the rush

Of blood through veins, a movement

That could stop with the next image

A booted foot, heel first, plunging into mud

Then darkness; no one else can own

That moment for you

After a few weeks of writing

“Deceased” across letters from home

Your CO no longer takes his cigarette

From his mouth and his pen moves swiftly

 

 

---

(He picks up a skull).

 

Alas, etcetera (he smiles)

We all become fertilizers for the future

We forget that we’re of the earth

Yet there’s a peculiar joy in remembering

To re-member ourselves with the earth

And its wonders.  There are no

Hypocrisies in nature, only consequences

And though we spend our lives trying

To crawl out of nature’s grip we cannot

We get hauled back generation after generation

But this is not sad; it is joyous

To make room.  It is joyous to kiss

This brief moment and to mirror

Our lives in the skulls of the past

So we may recall our future

Death is the great equalizer

And our gate to joy in life

 

But why now?!  Why him then?!

Both of us young, barely begun

Our main contributions so far

Have been our deaths

And a small batch of poems

Is that all the earth wants from me?!

And him

 

(He tosses the skull).

 

And still, along with disappointment

There’s this enormous calm

Here the zigzag pattern of choice

Will end.  Of all possible moments

This is the last, uncertainty

Is gone, this is the solidest of all times – no flux

A rest is settling in my body

My center of gravity is lowering

 

 

---

And up above an unkindness of ravens

Is celebrating flight because

That what they’re meant to do

The glide beyond the barrage

In another world where things

Are enough in themselves

Preserve this!

And preserve the hiding hawks, also

For they know the business of their lives

 

Layers must be shed

To uncover a naked path

 

Tearing at the corners of garment

Consumes generations, yet the veins

Of life shift with every breath

 

Frustration guards the gates

Veils cloak it and all trails

Are ablaze with thirst

 

And it is good.

 

(He is hit.  Darkness).

 

THE END