The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

“De Moose”

from Dakota Horizons

Jessamine Slaughter Burgum

published in 1940 by The Times Publishing Co., Hunter, North Dakota

“The poems herein may be reprinted or used in any program as desired if due credit is given to author and publisher.”

Yes, by Gar,

I tak you two young fallers,

From de states,

To where de moose live;

I show you good sport.

Tak de hydroplane over dere,

Fly over mooseland and land on de lake,

Den tak canoe and paddle up de river,

Till you come to big lake;

Water planty rough,

Watch out or canoe tip over,

Faller from Sent Paul drown here last week

Good swimmer too,

But heavy boots, clothes, cartridge belt,

Pull heem under, sink like a rock.

Armistice Day:

Survivor’s guilt – and we are all survivors, and are all guilty for all of war.

-The Voice before the Void

“Lament”

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

We who are left, how shall we look again

Happily on the sun, or feel the rain,

Without remembering how they who went

Ungrudgingly and spent

Their all for us, loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain wet lilac sings—

But we, how shall we turn to little things

And listen to the birds and winds and streams

Made holy by their dreams,

Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?

Armistice Day:

A “traditional English war ballad” from the First World War.

The tradition is not only English, but broad; not only from World War I, but ancient; not abandoned, but ongoing.

-The Voice before the Void

“Hanging on the Old Barbed Wire”

anonymous

If you want to find the colonel I know where he is,

He’s pinning another medal on his chest.

If you want to find the captain I know where he is,

He’s home again on seven days’ leave.

If you want to find the quartermaster I know where he is,

He’s drinking up the company’s rum.

If you want to find the sergeant I know where he is,

He’s drunk upon the dug-out floor.

If you want to find the privates I know where they are,

They’re hanging on the old barbed wire.

Armistice Day:

The only type of war hero that ought be celebrated.

-The Voice before the Void

“Ronald Skirth”

Wikipedia

John Ronald Skirth (11 December 1897 – 1977) served in the Royal Garrison Artillery during the First World War. His experiences during the Battle of Messines and the Battle of Passchendaele led him to resolve not to take human life, and for the rest of his army service he made deliberate errors in targeting calculations to try to ensure the guns of his battery missed their aiming point on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate. Many years later, after retiring from a career as a teacher, he wrote a memoir of his years in the army, describing his disillusionment with the conduct of the war and his conversion to pacifism. In 2010 the memoir was published as The Reluctant Tommy, edited by Duncan Barrett.

1. Early life and war service

Skirth was born in Chelmsford and grew up in Bexhill-on-Sea. In the First World War, having volunteered for the British Army under the Derby Scheme, and having requested that the process be expedited, he was called up in October 1916, two months before his 19th birthday. He became a Battery Commander’s Assistant in the Royal Garrison Artillery, responsible for making the calculations necessary to target the large guns of a field battery. When he argued with a superior officer over whether to use a French church for target practice he was demoted in rank from Corporal to Bombardier.

Skirth saw action in the Battle of Messines, in which two of his closest friends, Bill and Geordie, were killed. On the same day he had an “epiphany” when he stumbled across the body of a dead German of about his own age, and realised that one of the shells he had targeted might well have killed him. This was to mark a turning point in his thinking about the war as he determined that he was morally responsible for his actions and for their consequences, despite the chain of command.

During the Battle of Passchendaele, Skirth and another friend, Jock Shiels, left their post when they discovered that their commanding officer had ignored an order to withdraw from the front line. Skirth was knocked out by a shell which killed Shiels, and subsequently suffered from shell-shock and amnesia. Following a period of convalescence in hospital in France, he was sent to the Italian Front in December 1917, where his battery was being reorganised. There, following a relapse of shell-shock, he was treated in hospital in Schio and at the mud spa at Montegrotto.

In Italy, Skirth made a resolution that he would do everything within his power to avoid further loss of human life. He felt that the “just war” he had signed up for was anything but just, and was disillusioned with the army and the conduct of the war. In a church in the Italian village of San Martino, near Vicenza, he made a private pact with God that he would never again help to take a human life. He wrote to his future wife, Ella Christian, claiming that he had become a pacifist and a conscientious objector. He also began a campaign of small acts of sabotage, introducing minor errors into his trajectory calculations so as to mistarget the guns, such that they “never once hit an inhabited target” on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate. His actions were never discovered by his superiors.

Apparently he carried out this sabotage while still in Italy where he remained until February 1919, aside from a fortnight of leave back in England in November and December 1918. He received the British War Medal and Victory Medal for his war service but declined the Military Medal, which he felt was offered as part of an attempt to whitewash a fatal accident he had tried to prevent.

2. Later life

In September 1919 Skirth returned to England, to commence teacher training,

Armistice Day:

Such is every war.

-The Voice before the Void

“A Good War”

from Unhappy Far-off Things

Lord Dunsany

Nietzsche said, “You have heard that a good cause justifies any war, but I say unto you that a good war justifies any cause.”

A man was walking alone over a plain so desolate that, if you have never seen it, the mere word desolation could never convey to you the melancholy surroundings that mourned about this man on his lonely walk. Far off a vista of trees followed a cheerless road all dead as mourners suddenly stricken dead in some funereal procession. By this road he had come; but when he had reached a certain point he turned from the road at once, branching away to the left, led by a line of bushes that may once have been a lane. For some while his feet had rustled through long neglected grass; sometimes he lifted them up to step over a telephone wire that lolled over old entanglements and bushes; often he came to rusty strands of barbed wire and walked through them where they had been cut, perhaps years ago, by huge shells; then his feet hissed on through the grass again, dead grass that had hissed about his boots all through the afternoon.

Once he sat down to rest on the edge of a crater, weary with such walking as he had never seen before; and after he had stayed there a little while a cat that seemed to have its home in that wild place started suddenly up and leaped away over the weeds. It seemed an animal totally wild, and utterly afraid of man.

Grey bare hills surrounded the waste: a partridge called far off: evening was drawing in. He rose wearily, and yet with a certain fervour, as one that pursues with devotion a lamentable quest. Looking round him as he left his resting-place he saw a cabbage or two that after some while had come back to what was a field and had sprouted on the edge of a shell-hole. A yellowing convolvulus climbed up a dead weed. Weeds, grass and tumbled earth were all about him. It would be no better when he went on. Still he went on. A flower or two peeped up among the weeds. He stood up and looked at the landscape and drew no hope from that, the shattered trunk of a stricken tree leered near him, white trenches scarred the hillside. He followed an old trench through a hedge of elder, passed under more wire, by a great rusty shell that had not burst, passed by a dug-out where something grey seemed to lie down at the bottom of many steps. Black fungi grew near the entrance. He went on and on over shell-holes, passing round them where they were deep, stepping into or over the small ones. Little burrs clutched at him; he went rustling on, the only sound in the waste but the clicking of shattered iron. Now he was among nettles. He came by many small unnatural valleys. He passed more trenches only guarded by fungi. While it was light he followed little paths, marvelling who made them. Once he got into a trench. Dandelions leaned across it as though to bar his way, believing man to have gone and to have no right to return. Weeds thronged, in thousands here. It was the day of the weeds. It was only they that seemed to triumph in those fields deserted of man. He passed on down the trench and never knew whose trench it once had been. Frightful shells had smashed it here and there, and had twisted iron as though round gigantic fingers that had twiddled it idly a moment and let it drop to lie in the rain for ever. He passed more dug-outs and black fungi, watching them; and then he left the trench, going straight on over the open: again dead grasses hissed about his feet, sometimes small wire sang faintly. He passed through a belt of nettles and thence to dead grass again. And now the light of the afternoon was beginning to dwindle away. He had intended to reach his journey’s end by daylight, for he was past the time of life when one wanders after dark, but he had not contemplated the difficulty of walking o...

Armistice Day:

A celebrated poem about the Flanders Campaign of the British army during the War of the First Coalition, written and published during the First World War as the British army was fighting in Flanders.

-The Voice before the Void

“Patterns”

Amy Lowell

I walk down the garden paths,

And all the daffodils

Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.

I walk down the patterned garden-paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,

I too am a rare

Pattern. As I wander down

The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,

And the train

Makes a pink and silver stain

On the gravel, and the thrift

Of the borders.

Just a plate of current fashion,

Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.

Not a softness anywhere about me,

Only whalebone and brocade.

And I sink on a seat in the shade

Of a lime tree. For my passion

Wars against the stiff brocade.

The daffodils and squills

Flutter in the breeze

As they please.

And I weep;

For the lime-tree is in blossom

And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops

In the marble fountain

Comes down the garden-paths.

The dripping never stops.

Underneath my stiffened gown

Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,

A basin in the midst of hedges grown

So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,

But she guesses he is near,

And the sliding of the water

Seems the stroking of a dear

Hand upon her.

What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!

I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.

All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,

And he would stumble after,

Bewildered by my laughter.

I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.

I would choose

To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,

A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,

Till he caught me in the shade,

And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,

Aching, melting, unafraid.

With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,

And the plopping of the waterdrops,

All about us in the open afternoon—

I am very like to swoon

With the weight of this brocade,

For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom

In my bosom,

Is a letter I have hid.

It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.

“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell

Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”

As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,

The letters squirmed like snakes.

“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.

“No,” I told him.

“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.

No, no answer.”

And I walked into the garden,

Up and down the patterned paths,

In my stiff, correct brocade.

The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,

Each one.

I stood upright too,

Held rigid to the pattern

By the stiffness of my gown.

Up and down I walked,

Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.

In a month, here, underneath this lime,

We would have broke the pattern;

He for me, and I for him,

He as Colonel, I as Lady,

On this shady seat.

He had a whim

That sunlight carried blessing.

And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”

Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk

Up and down

The patterned garden-paths

In my stiff, brocaded gown.

The squills and daffodils

Armistice Day

World War I poetry, in commemoration of all wars

“The March”

J.C. Squire

I heard a voice that cried, “Make way for those who died!”

And all the coloured crowd like ghosts at morning fled;

And down the waiting road, rank after rank there strode,

In mute and measured march a hundred thousand dead.

A hundred thousand dead, with firm and noiseless tread,

All shadowy-grey yet solid, with faces grey and ghast,

And by the house they went, and all their brows were bent

Straight forward; and they passed, and passed, and passed, and passed.

But O there came a place, and O there came a face,

That clenched my heart to see it, and sudden turned my way;

And in the Face that turned I saw two eyes that burned,

Never-forgotten eyes, and they had things to say.

Like desolate stars they shone one moment, and were gone,

And I sank down and put my arms across my head,

And felt them moving past, nor looked to see the last,

In steady silent march, our hundred thousand dead.

Armistice Day:

Beauty drawn from the murder of millions, and I cannot handle this beauty, I cannot handle this beauty.

-The Voice before the Void

“The Dancers”

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

All day beneath the hurtling shells

Before my burning eyes

Hover the dainty demoiselles–

The peacock dragon-flies.

Unceasingly they dart and glance

Above the stagnant stream–

And I am fighting here in France

As in a senseless dream–

A dream of shattering black shells

That hurtle overhead,

And dainty dancing demoiselles

Above the dreamless dead.

October Revolution Anniversary

and

U.S. Election Day:

Ever is there political turmoil; ever are there displaced people.

-The Voice before the Void

“Paris is Full of Russians”

Ernest Hemingway

Toronto Star

1922 February 25

Paris.

Paris is full of Russians at present. The Russian ex-aristocracy are scattered all over Europe, running restaurants in Rome, tearooms on Capri, working as hotel porters in Nice and Marseilles and as laborers along the Mediterranean shipping centers. But those Russians who managed to bring some money or possessions with them seem to have flocked to Paris.

They are drifting along in Paris in a childish sort of hopefulness that things will somehow be all right, which is quite charming when you first encounter it and rather maddening after a few months. No one knows just how they live except it is by selling off jewels and gold ornaments and family heirlooms that they brought with them to France when they fled before the revolution.

According to the manager of a great jewel house on the Rue de la Paix, pearls have come down in price because of the large numbers of beautiful pearls that have been sold to Parisian jewel buyers by the Russian refugees. It is true that many Russians are living fairly lavishly in Paris at present on the sale of jewels they have brought with them in their exile.

Just what the Russian colony in Paris will do when all the jewels are sold and all the valuables pawned is somewhat of a question. It is usually impossible for a large body of people to support themselves indefinitely by borrowing money, although a few people enjoy a great success at it for a time. Of course things may change in Russia, something wonderful might happen to aid the Russian colony. There is a cafe on the Boulevard Montparnasse where a great number of Russians gather every day for this something wonderful to happen and then, eventually, like all the rest of the world, the Russians of Paris may have to go to work. It seems a pity, they are such a charming lot.

All lost, all forgotten.

-The Voice before the Void

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”

Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.