Thursday – Veterans Day
Judge Walter Kurtz, my tennis partner and a decorated Vietnam vet, joked the other day about his children calling him on Memorial Day. “You’re supposed to call me on Veterans Day,” he tells them. “Do you want me dead?”
On Memorial Day we honor our fallen military, on Veterans Day those who are still alive.
World War I veteran Siegfried Sassoon has a powerful memory poem where he contrasts life before and after he witnessed death in the trenches. The fact that, in the second stanza, he sounds like an old man, even though he was only 31 when he wrote the poem, tells us all we need to know. Death has ripped away his innocence and, while it has made him wiser and stronger, it has also made him bitter. Whereas once he reveled /gay and feckless as a colt/
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,” now he asks to be brought
the darkness and the nightingale;
Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home,
And silence; and the faces of my friends.
I’m thinking that poet Dylan Thomas was inspired by Sassoon’s childhood memories, echoing them in his “Poem in October” (which I wrote about recently). Sassoon was an admirer of Wales, so maybe that played a role in the Welsh poet’s allusion.
And as with Thomas, the mood turns dark. Sassoon isn’t certain that he will in fact achieve peace of home, silence, and memory of his friends. His heart is “heavy-laden” and his dreams are burning away.
Memory
By Siegfried Sassoon
When I was young my heart and head were light,
And I was gay and feckless as a colt
Out in the fields, with morning in the may,
Wind on the grass, wings in the orchard bloom.
O thrilling sweet, my joy, when life was free
And all the paths led on from hawthorn-time
Across the caroling meadows into June.
But now my heart is heavy-laden. I sit
Burning my dreams away beside the fire:
For death has made me wise and bitter and strong;
And I am rich in all that I have lost.
O starshine on the fields of long-ago,
Bring me the darkness and the nightingale;
Dim wealds of vanished summer, peace of home,
And silence; and the faces of my friends.