War Poets

Since it is Remembrance Sunday this weekend (and Armistice Day today) there are lots of Poppy sellers around. I spoke to my mother last night and she mentioned that whilst she has made a donation to the poppy fund she will not be wearing one. Of course, she is old enough to actually remember a World War so does not regard a Poppy as a simple fashion item which they appear to have become. However, she did find the joint remembrance of the English and German football teams (and military personnel) before last night’s football match to be quite touching and far more in line with what remembrance week should really be about.

One thing that I did pick up from my mother is an appreciation of War Poets. War poetry offers a first-hand glimpse at the reality of war and it is far from being rose-tinted solemnity. It is horrific, brutal, often angry and always honest. There seem to be one or two bits of war poetry that are often recited but as an act of remembrance it really should be delved into. If it doesn’t make you angry then you are missing the point. There is only really one thing that one should remember about war: never again.

One poet that I have picked up recently is the Welsh poet Hedd Wyn (the bardic name meaning “White Peace”) who posthumously won the poets award at the Birkenhead Eisteddfod of 1917 just weeks after he had died at Passchendaele. This is a translation of his Poem “War”:

Bitter to live in times like these.
While God declines beyond the seas;
Instead, man, king or peasantry,
Raises his gross authority.

When he thinks God has gone away
Man takes up his sword to slay
His brother; we can hear death's roar.
It shadows the hovels of the poor.

Like the old songs they left behind,
We hung our harps in the willows again.
Ballads of boys blow on the wind,
Their blood is mingled with the rain.

Gwae fi fy myw mewn oes mor ddreng,
A Duw ar drai ar orwel pell;
O'i ôl mae dyn, yn deyrn a gwreng,
Yn codi ei awdurdod hell.

Pan deimlodd fyned ymaith Dduw
Cyfododd gledd i ladd ei frawd;
Mae swn yr ymladd ar ein clyw,
A'i gysgod ar fythynnod tlawd.

Mae'r hen delynau genid gynt,
Ynghrog ar gangau'r helyg draw,
A gwaedd y bechgyn lond y gwynt,
A'u gwaed yn gymysg efo'r glaw

Hedd Wyn (1887 – 1917)