VE Day 80th Anniversary

                                         Poem After War -Henry Treece 

                         

 Not sure how to mark this anniversary, but thought a short poem would be appropriate. It is worth recalling that as well as VE Day being a day of celebration for many people, there were those who fought and did not feel like joining the party. 

 Poem After War -Henry Treece ( from The Haunted Garden, collection of poetry published 1947)

" Fearful that summer will forget the frost
And boys the body broken on a stake,
We stand. And who shall blame us if we take
The sword again to bring to life the past?
Future can only live by death of fears,
By love as effortless as lilt of birds;
To learn such love , and hear such flaming words 
Our dead would wait another thousand years."

Henry Treece found the night of VE Day difficult :

" As I walk on, I cannot help thinking that before the Japanese are defeated, war will have taken perhaps eight years of my life. May I can just afford to lose eight years; there are many thousands who can't though. As I turn into my road, I pass a soldier staggering along with his girl. She is wearing a comical coloured hat, bearing the words; YOU'VE HAD IT, BIG BOY! I can't feeling how very true these words are for so many of us ." HEWISON 

Born 1911, Henry Treece served  RAF Intelligence  in World War 2, and was associated with the New Apocalypse poets of the 1940's, who became one of the most maligned and unpopular posse of published poets by the mid 1950's onward. They were devotees of Dylan Thomas, though Thomas himself largely kept his distance. The group name was taken from D H Lawrence's work Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, written in 1929-1930, whilst the writings of Freud and the art of the Surrealists were influences. The emphasis was very much on the Poet as an individual creating their own myth, disconnected from social reality. 

The Haunted Garden from 1947 is quite a bleak collection.Been out of print for ages. There is a great sense of mourning in many poems, and an absence of triumphalism or even celebration that the War was over.  In Poem After War  there is a feeling of that the sword will be picked up again, conflict would re-emerge, unless something radically changes in the condition of humanity.  

There is an attempt to recreate Civil War poet Richard Lovelace's poem Song to Lucasta Going to the Warres (sic) . Lovelace was on the defeated Royalist side. Treece's poem To Lucasta while at the Wars  is one of the weaker offerings in The Haunted Garden . An untitled poem which follows from this collection is now usually referred to by its first line  Who murdered the Minutes , also dealing with lost time. 

" Who murdered the minutes,

The bright golden minutes, the minutes of youth;

I,said the Soldier dressed in his red coat,

I with my trumpet, my sword and my flag.... " 

            This poem was set to music for Joan Baez's album 'Baptism Journey through Our Time ' in 1968 , released at the height of the anti-Vietnam War protests. ('Baptism' also included Baez's take on Henry Treece's quite enchanting poems The Magic Wood, Oh,Little Child,  and a very chilling recital of Wilfred Owen's Parable of the Old Man and the Young) 

Henry Treece became less of a published poet, a school teacher, and a prolific writer of historical novel for children until his death in 1966. He is now most remembered for the latter. Sadly his contributions to compiling anthologies of poetry and short stories such as the Transformations  ( with Stefan Schiminski ) annually 1943-1947)  series, and Air Force Poetry ( with John Pudney 1944) are often overlooked. 

Picture Credit : 

Somerset Place, Bath 1942,  John Piper , Courtesy of The Tate , in the public domain.

More information

Books

'Under Siege- Literary Life in London 1939-1945' Robert HEWISON, Wiedenfield & Nicolson, 1978

'The Haunted Gardens' , Henry TREECE , Faber & Faber 1947

Youtube

Who Murdered The Minutes   Joan Baez's version of Henry Treece's poem, from 'Baptism' 1968

Previous Post 

Air Raid  Poem by Henry Treece, post from this blog in 2016 

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