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 

World War 2 Poetry blog supports the Second World War Experience Centre  Please consider looking at their website and the SWWEC Youtube Channel 

Henry Treece - 'Air Raid'

                                   Henry Treece -'Air Raid' 

                                                      

   Graham Sutherland : The City A Fallen Lift Shaft (1941)  : In the Public Domain, courtesy of Wikipedia 
 

Was recently reading an anthology 'More Poems from the Forces By Serving Members Of the Navy, Army, and Air Force' edited by Keidrich Rhys from 1943 ' This Volume is dedicated to the U.S.S.R. 
Said anthology has some intriguing work such as Peter Hellings ( Aircraftman 2, R.A.F. ) 

FROM DISTANT LANDS
(For the writers and artists of Europe who have been forced to leave their own countries )

" From distant lands
They have come, 
Across centuries held in the grip of murderous hands,
Leaving the bitter mirth
And the mock heroics of the drum
In the clear air
Of this town
A painter of men and women is caught in the flare
Of the great grief of the earth
Like workers breaking stone
For the blood and the bone 
Have returned
Life African fetishes or the burial of a nation's sun,
And under the threat of death
Pictures and books have been burned ......."


One aspect of World War 1 poetry that is not always very endearing is the indifference the acclaimed War Poets seem to demonstrate  towards the plight of  civilians- even refugees are rarely included in the 'pity of war' . The above poem-from World War 2- at least recognises displacement of artists .

Henry Treece, 22nd December 1911- 10th June 1966 , another RAF serving officer, depicted the unbearable tension of being caught in an air raid in a poem that also found its way into the above volume. So far have not established whether Treece himself flew on any bombing missions. His entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography isn't clear on this point - stating that he '"joined the volunteer reserve of the RAF in 1941, attaining the rank of flight lieutenant but serving mainly as an intelligence officer". Already an accomplished and published poet before the War,  and co-founder of the New Apocalypse movement,  Treece jointly edited a collection with John Pudney titled 'Air Force Poetry' , published in 1944.


AIR -RAID

" Here then a testament, drawn from my heart's black well
Like a bucket of blood;
It is still night and the steel birds hover
Over my paltry house on the hill,
Hover and hover. O will they fly over,
Away to the sea and let me lie still?
It is no food
This carrion hunts for; the hand on the lever
Knows no flesh's hunger; the pitiable kill
Is child at the body, or lover to lover
Counting the hours to a kindly future
In a house that can be over or under the hill
If this hell will but pass, and death cover his feature.

Have they gone then, away, and left body still breathing,
The clock on the wall?
The fire crackles gently, the door swings ajar,
The stairs with the ghost of a footstep are creaking.
Away at the coast the waiting guns fire,
At the shadow of death and his terrible speaking,
They turn again,
Re-seeking a prey, or retreating in fear,
Their heartless black hears a black litany croaking..
But there's only one hymn that we wait to hear,
And that is the Raider Past siren wailing....
It's morning again and the baby is teething,
There's a crack an inch wide in the drawing room ceiling. " 

One of the most surprising poems about air raids must be Dylan Thomas'  'Failure To Mourn the Death by Fire, of a Child ' , suggesting that the death of a child is a subject that is simply beyond words. Dylan Thomas was in London from 1940- 1944, taking the second from last verse. 

" The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth." 


Other major poems dealing with Air Raids include ' Air Raid Across The Bay At Plymouth'  by Stephen Spender and 'Elegy on a City'  by Julian Symons.

Overall the 'War in the Air 'poetry has not considered to be of great significance : Perhaps the most famous example of this genre would be W.B. Yeats'  'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death' from 1919 with its staggering opening lines;

"I know that I shall meet my fate
 Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love ".....

I use the term 'perhaps' quite deliberately. W.B.Yeats generally opposed the writing of war poetry , and was famously dismissive of Wilfred Owen's work, but its hard to avoid detaching 'An Irish Airman....' from the category of 'War Poetry' even though the poem embodies individual detachment from colossal events.

There will be more on Henry Treece on this blog in the future, particularly his involvement in the Transformation anthologies, that appeared annually between 1943-1947, combining poetry, prose, drama and art.



World War 2 Poetry blog supports the Second World War Experience Centre  Please consider looking at their website and the SWWEC Youtube Channel