Four Poets in the Second World War

“No remedy, my retrospective friend,

We’ve found no remedy

. . . for our split mind,” wrote Drummond Allison.

“No room for mourning,”

Sidney Keyes explained.

Both died in ’43, Drummond just twenty-two, at Monte Cassino in Italy,

Sidney, not yet twenty-one, in North Africa:

“And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities

      Exhorting us to slaughter, and the herded refugees,”

Alun Lewis recalled—who died on the Arakan front in Burma (Myanmar?) in ’44.

“Blood, spirit, in this war. But night begins,

Night of the mind: who nowadays is conscious of our sins?”

Frank Prince, born in Kimberly in 1912, not far from the Big Hole, and where I once worked

in the Old Mint Buildings, summed up.

He survived—thanks to the god of war!

—and lived on till 2003,

expounding Milton, in Southampton by the sea.

Allison, “No Remedy”; Keyes, “William Wordsworth”; Lewis, “All Day It Has Rained”; Prince, “Soldiers Bathing,” in More Poems from the Forces, ed. Keidrych Rhys (1943).

The Fourth of July

Once more in the mirror our reflection,

Hang-dog, dopey, filled with such dejection,

What celebrate, this music to admire,

Hopes nugatory, and feet to the holy fire?

—Gemistòs Kaēmós (Venice, ca 1453–54)

Good morning and happy Independence Day. Our travel weekend is getting off to an uncomfortable start, with chimeras and basilisks in the east. Expect fireworks this evening—the bird and insect apocalypse is underway! A hot and humid air mass will persist for half a million years or so, give or take a millennium or two.  We are tracking a cold front to our west. Paris and several other major European cities are reported to have disappeared. Showers and scattered thunderstorms will develop, but the holiday will not be a washout—the next ten thousand  years or so are trending drier. A good deal of transubstantiation is expected, with flesh and blood becoming bread and wine, or vice-versa. Jesus Christ Themself is unlikely to make an appearance. Have a great and safe holiday!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_the_Slave_Is_the_Fourth_of_July%3F

Vivant sequentes

Marc Chagall, 1911–12, Hommage à Apollinaire, or Adam et Ève, gouache, watercolor, ink wash, pen and ink and collage on paper

May they live, all those decided to come:

Vivant sequentes. Why, cherish the thought!

May they live, may they love, in sunshine sport,

Be happy they're them, and not just anyone.

So prayed the old Greeks, old Nguni, old Han.

So prayed all those born to woman and man.

And so must we pray in our turn, unafraid,

Averting our eyes from the mess that we've made.