The legend of Ledwidge

Sometimes in life, we have been lying too long in the cosy hay, till reality awakens us from our slumber. War with all its impositions, heightens the senses, its fearful ferocity casting a behemoth blot on the world's landscape, a disturbance at the instigation of unruly aggressors. Death and destruction as in today's battles, were too, the hallmarks of the First World War. Our forebears would have branded a troublemaker, a bad article, indeed an apt description for any warmonger. Fighting is not poetical, but out of the horror, and in the hands of the writer, poetry is born.

Since 2014, there has been a decided interest in the Great War in both documentary and film. Movies like ‘All Quiet on the Western’ Front, and another, about a soldier's lone journey in the film, ‘1917’, capture the barbarous machinations of modern warfare. Then, there is Peter Jackson's terrific documentary, ‘They Shall not Grow Old,’ chronologically compiled from thousands of interviews, combined with restored live action footage, arranged, and presented in a step by step telling from outbreak to end, is an eye opener.

On 27 August 1984, while on holiday in Bettystown, my mother brought us as children to see the home of a celebrated Irish poet of the Great War, Francis Ledwidge. Parking along the roadside, we walked towards the cottage, listening to birds whistling in hedgerow as we approached the front door of Ledwidge’s respectfully restored abode, near Slane, Co. Meath. I recall the day of our visit because I remember hearing on the car radio that afternoon about the death of the actor who starred as Stan Ogden in Coronation Street.

Francis Ledwidge while still a serving soldier in 1915 had a first volume containing fifty of his poems published. He died in 1917 and three months later in 1918 a second volume, Songs of Peace, was published. Baron Dunsany had been Ledwidge’s kindly patron and supporter, without whom these poems may not have received the deserved attention that they thankfully received. In all, four volumes of Ledwidge’s poetry were produced.

Soliloquy is an exceptionally fine Ledwidge poem, and I would encourage anybody to obtain and read his work.

Many Irish soldiers like the poet Tom Kettle would have rallied not in support of a flag, but to fight in defence of the vulnerable, the Belgium people, who were the victims of war. Kettle wrote:

'So here, while the mad guns curse overhead,

And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor,

Know that we fools, now with foolish dead,

Died not for flag, nor king, nor emperor,

But for a dream, born in a herdsman's shed,

And for the scripture of the poor.'

I must say thank you to P.J. Kennedy for suggesting I look at the topic of war poetry when we recently met up. After a great discussion on the topic, I was delighted to listen to a recital by P.J. of his poem, ‘A Button From A Trench,’ which appears in an excellent collection he wrote, Shadows On Our Doorstep. The poem appears at the end of the column for your enjoyment.

Arguably, the power of poetry can bring us into a closer empathy with the intensity of another's experience of war. There is no medium that I know of, quite like that of a poem to convey the emotions of the human condition.

Trench foot

In severe weather, they could find themselves trapped in wet mud up to their waste. Things were not too pleasant in the trenches. Soldiers endured being surrounded by rats, and lice and disease; a horrible side effect of soaked footwear was trench foot, a type of gangrene. So, there was always more than enough to write about. Trench warfare was a soul-destroying exercise for the soldier, while their Superior Officers lived safely back at base, for the most part oblivious to the visual terror faced on the front-line. The English poet Siegfrid Sassoon best captures the attitude and mood of the ordinary soldier towards their leaders in his poem ‘Base Details’:

‘If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath

I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,

Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel …’

Indeed, poetry has the power to capture imaginations and shake us from the safety of our cosy reveries.

A Button From A Trench

By P.J. Kennedy

Private John Dolan

got a severe blow to his head.

He fell into the clábar and glár

at Private John Cassidy's feet.

After Dolan's last breath

Cassidy tour a button from his shirt,

a keepsake.

In Private Cassidy's fighting hands

The button seemed bullet-ridden.

It became the crucifix in its ring of steel

on the gable of Belturbet Chapel.

He saw the dome

of Mrs Dolan's soda bread,

The wooden wheel of his father's barrow,

The seat of his neighbour's milking stool.

Before he put it in his pocket,

he saw the arches in Kilconny Bridge

below their homes in Patrick Street.

Among death in the mud

there wasn't a sup of water

to wash Private John Dolan's face

where life rushed from him

in the bottom of a trench,

Ypres, March 1915.

Soliloquy

By Francis Ledwidge

When I was young I had a care

Lest I should cheat me of my share

Of what which makes it sweet to strive

For life, and dying still survive,

A name in sunshine written higher

Than lark or poet dare aspire.

But I grew weary doing well,

Besides, ’twas sweeter in that hell,

Down with the loud banditti people

Who robbed the orchards, climbed the steeple

For jackdaws’ eggs and made the cock

Crow ere ’twas daylight on the clock.

I was so very bad the neighbours

Spoke of me at their daily labours.

And now I’m drinking wine in France,

The helpless child of circumstance.

Tomorrow will be loud with war,

How will I be accounted for?

It is too late now to retrieve

A fallen dream, too late to grieve

A name unmade, but not too late

To thank the gods for what is great;

A keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart,

Is greater than a poet’s art.

And greater than a poet’s fame

A little grave that has no name.