Proud-pied April: My heart gives you love

Since my Gratitude Monday post today is about the resting place of soldiers, let’s have a couple of National Poetry Month poems on the subject.

I gave you Carl Sandburg’s “The Grass” two years ago, but it’s worth another look. Because the grass is doing its work at Arlington, and at military cemeteries all over the world, and Sandburg captures that working in just a few, well-placed words. It blows me away every time.

“The Grass”

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

                                          I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

                                          What place is this?

                                          Where are we now?

                                          I am the grass.

                                          Let me work.

My other poem today is Walt Whitman’s “Dirge for Two Veterans”. Whitman had an up-close-and-personal view of the War Between the States; he volunteered as a nurse and witnessed some of the worst that could be seen, considering the carnage of that war and the state of medicine at that time.

(If you get a chance, you should visit Antietam National Battlefield, which has a display of some surgical instruments used during the war. It’s horrifying.)

The grave he describes is a double one: father and son, not an unheard-of event in that particular war. And how many sad processions like the one we see here have wound through Arlington’s drives? Way too many.

“Dirge for Two Veterans”

THE last sunbeam

Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,

On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,

Down a new-made double grave.

Lo! the moon ascending!

Up from the east, the silvery round moon;

Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon;

Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,

And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles;

All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,

As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,

And the small drums steady whirring;

And every blow of the great convulsive drums,

Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father;

In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;

Two veterans, son and father, dropt together,

And the double grave awaits them.

Now nearer blow the bugles,

And the drums strike more convulsive;

And the day-light o'er the pavement quite has faded,

And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,

The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd;

('Tis some mother's large, transparent face,

In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march, you please me!

O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!

O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!

What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,

And the bugles and the drums give you music;

And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,

My heart gives you love.

Gratitude Monday: Quiet in the neighborhood

Last Sunday, Easter, I took Metro a couple of stops and spent a few hours in Arlington National Cemetery. It’s one of my favorite places in the D.C. area, mixing the affairs of men with nature, and it always gives me both comfort and something to think about.

As a military cemetery, Arlington got its start during the War Between the States. The property was owned by the family of Robert E. Lee’s wife (handed down from the grandson of George Washington’s wife, Martha Custis). Arlington House is beautifully situated on a hill affording spectacular views of the capital of the United States, which made it an early target for Union troops, who occupied it in May of 1861.

(Here it is on Easter of this year.)

By 1862, the Federals were in the market for places to bury their dead, and Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, eventually authorized the use of the property for military graves. A Georgian who loathed Lee for joining the Confederacy, Meigs thought it just that, by burying Union dead mere steps from Arlington House, the Lees could never live in the family home again.

Well, he was right. By the end of the war, there were hundreds of graves; these days there are 400,000. The preponderance of them are military, with spouses and children. A few politicians who felt that rooting in the Congressional trough entitled them to burial here; but no neighborhood is perfect.

I love walking among these graves, reading the markers and wondering about the stories they represent. Like this one:

Presumably, Roy van Dusen was Beatrice’s husband; the birth dates look about right. But he was a lieutenant colonel in the army and she a private first class. There are regulations against officers fraternizing with enlisted personnel; where and when did Roy and Beatrice meet?

My pal Google tells me that there was a Roy Reed van Dusen III born in 1945, and that his parents were married “between 1940 and November 1942. Roy III died in 1968, in Killeen, Texas; he’s buried in Arlington, too (although I didn’t notice his grave).

Nearby, another grave was being visited:

Not far from the robin's perch, there was another story being played out. An old man and two 30- or 40-something offspring (Son/daughter? Child and spouse?) spent considerable time beside one of the large tombstones, while I wandered about trying to track down former Secretary of State Alexander Haig's permanent resting place. (He was also a four-star general in the Army, and his middle name was Meigs, so he's entitled.) After they left, I looked at the stone, one of those large ones. The name on it was a woman's, with the "beloved wife" designator. The space for the service member was blank, so I'm deducing that the older man will at some point lie there as well.

Here’s another story of immeasurable grief, captured in just a few words and a date:

But you see other stories at Arlington. While I was meandering around Section 30, I heard the distinctive sound of a Harley and noted a lone motorcyclist wheeling past. Later on, I walked back along Section 36 and saw the bike parked in the road, with the rider midway down one of the rows, leaning against one gravestone and contemplating another. I didn’t get close enough to read the name; I’ll do that another time.

Because I plan on visiting regularly. And I'm grateful that I can do that, because it's my neighborhood.

Proud-pied April: We find our bliss

Since we’re marking the centenary of the Easter Rising, let’s have some Irish poems for National Poetry Month.

We’ll start out with one that’s been around a good while longer than a hundred years. “Pangur Bán” was written by an unknown Ninth Century monk; the exact circumstances have become partial legend in the intervening time. It was purportedly found in the margins (or on the back of a page) of a manuscript, with locations ranging from a copy of Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Book of Kells.

I myself don’t much care about that, because the sentiment resonates with anyone who’s ever had to do document research in study carrels of any library of any scholastic institution anywhere. Ever.

Do you mean to tell me that you never once penciled in some comment in the margin of some old tome you were bent over in the pursuit of some morsel of enlightenment that you thought might impress a professor?

Still, it’s the rare scholar who could toss off something like this, rounding up the pleasures of being a monk and being a cat.

“Pangur Bán”

I and Pangur Bán, my cat,

'Tis a like task we are at;

Hunting mice is his delight,

Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men

'Tis to sit with book and pen;

Pangur bears me no ill will;

He, too, plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see

At our task how glad are we,

When at home we sit and find

Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray

Into the hero Pangur's way;

Oftentimes my keen thought set

Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye

Full and fierce and sharp and sly;

'Gainst the wall of knowledge I

All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den.

O how glad is Pangur then!

O what gladness do I prove

When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,

Pangur Bán, my cat and I;

In our arts we find our bliss,

I have mine, and he has his.

Practice every day has made

Pangur perfect in his trade ;

I get wisdom day and night,

Turning Darkness into light.'

Proud-pied April: In fire and blood

Today’s selection for National Poetry Month takes us to Chile. Or at least, it takes us to a Chilean poet.

Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto is better known to us as Pablo Neruda, a stunning cultural force of the 20^th Century. Taking his pen name from a Czech poet, Neruda served Chile as a politician and diplomat, all the while writing furiously. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971, and died two years later (very possibly murdered by agents of the Pinochet regime).

He was deeply affected by his time spent in Spain during the 1930s and wrote some very powerful poems about the Spanish Civil War.

Neruda felt that it was a poet’s job to be involved in everything. As he said in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, “A poet is at the same time a force for solidarity and for solitude.”

Well.

I’m sharing one of his sonnets with you.

Sonnet LXVI

I do not love you except because I love you;

I go from loving to not loving you,

From waiting to not waiting for you

My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;

I hate you deeply, and hating you

Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you

Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume

My heart with its cruel

Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who

Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,

Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

Proud-pied April: A spirit of youth in every thing

Oh, yay—it’s April, so it’s National Poetry Month. I love this month!

Let’s step forward into these 30 days with one of the big guns. William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 98 is as good as any to usher in thoughts of spring, love and all that jazz.

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim

Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,

That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew;

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

   Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,

   As with your shadow I with these did play.

In rereading this I was strongly reminded of a more contemporary iteration of these sentiments—how separation from your lover changes your perception of the world around you. So I’ll give you Bill Withers and “Ain’t no Sunshine”.

Welcome to April.

Flagging content

‘Kay, just to show that pols are pols the world around, let’s talk about Patrice Hardy, a Sinn Féin member of the Mid- and East Antrim Borough Council, in Northern Ireland.

Hardy wanted to show her solidarity with the goals of the Easter Rising on social media by a spot of flag waving.

Except she slapped up thirteen icons of the flag of Côte d’Ivoire, not the Republic of Ireland.

(Personally, I’d have smacked her one upside the head for using ten exclamation points in a row.)

Côte d’Ivoire

Ireland

Yeah, I understand it’s kind of an easy mistake to make, especially if you’ve already started your celebration. But if you’re an Irish nationalist in Ulster, you really ought to make the extra effort to not look like a prize gobshite. Especially if you’re trying to make A Statement.

P.S. A couple of years ago a football club shop on the Shankill Road in Belfast (ground zero for Protestant unionism and UVF thuggery) had countries-of-the-world flags strung across their front window to celebrate the World Cup. Shop staff actually had to put up a note informing outraged members of the public that the tricolor flag they had was from Ivory Coast, not Ireland.

Folly or grace

I don’t see why I shouldn’t celebrate the centenary of the Easter Rising all week long. Like a Polish wedding. So today let’s have a poem from Pádraig Pearse, one of its leaders.

Pearse, a native Dubliner and a Roman Catholic, was a teacher, lawyer and poet, in addition to his nationalism and political activism. He was deeply committed to reviving Ireland’s literary heritage, including its language, which had withered under English rule. In that service, he founded St. Enda’s School in a Dublin suburb, where Irish was taught alongside English. When he was shot at Kilmainham on 3 May 1916, he was 36.

Pearse’s poetic style is a little flowery for my taste, but I suppose it’s not unusual for its time. And he was trying to stir strong emotions in his readers. A lot of his stuff is around the sorrows of Ireland, like “The Fool”, which was written for the funeral of his friend and fellow Irish Republican Brotherhood member, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

It suited his own end, as it happens.

The Fool

Since the wise men have not spoken, I speak that am only a fool;

A fool that hath loved his folly,

Yea, more than the wise men their books or their counting houses or their quiet homes,

Or their fame in men's mouths;

A fool that in all his days hath done never a prudent thing,

Never hath counted the cost, nor recked if another reaped

The fruit of his mighty sowing, content to scatter the seed;

A fool that is unrepentant, and that soon at the end of all

Shall laugh in his lonely heart as the ripe ears fall to the reaping-hooks

And the poor are filled that were empty,

Tho' he go hungry.

I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my youth

In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil.

Was it folly or grace? Not men shall judge me, but God.

I have squandered the splendid years:

Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again,

Aye, fling them from me!

For this I have heard in my heart, that a man shall scatter, not hoard,

Shall do the deed of to-day, nor take thought of to-morrow's teen,

Shall not bargain or huxter with God; or was it a jest of Christ's

And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word?

The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen, long faces,

And said, `This man is a fool,' and others have said, `He blasphemeth;'

And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life

In the world of time and space among the bulks of actual things,

To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart could hold.

O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?

What if the dream come true? and if millions unborn shall dwell

In the house that I shaped in my heart, the noble house of my thought?

Lord, I have staked my soul, I have staked the lives of my kin

On the truth of Thy dreadful word. Do not remember my failures,

But remember this my faith

And so I speak.

Yea, ere my hot youth pass, I speak to my people and say:

Ye shall be foolish as I; ye shall scatter, not save;

Ye shall venture your all, lest ye lose what is more than all;

Ye shall call for a miracle, taking Christ at His word.

And for this I will answer, O people, answer here and hereafter,

O people that I have loved, shall we not answer together?

Song for Ireland

On my way home yesterday, I stopped off at an alleged Irish pub in Pentagon Row to drink a pint in honor of the Easter Rising. It wasn’t quite the experience I’d have liked: I got my Smithwick’s, which is my ale of choice, but I had to listen to the Beach Boys, Pink Floyd and Three Dog Night.

It was the centenary of the Easter Uprising, for the love of God; they couldn’t put on something even vaguely related to Ireland? The Pogues? Van Morrison? U2? It’s not like I’m asking for The Dubliners or freaking Celtic Thunder; just something, you know, Irish-y.

Well sod them—I promised myself a pint and a rebel song, so here’s one of the more powerful renditions of “The Foggy Dew”, which was written about the events of Easter 1916.

Yeah, it’s sentimental, but such a concise summary of the Anglo-Irish experience. The Wild Geese originally were Irish Catholic soldiers who—forbidden by the English to carry arms in any capacity—fled the island and filled the ranks of a raft of Continental European armies for three centuries. (Frequently they served in armies facing the English, karma being a bitch.) In more recent history, the term refers to Britain calling on Irishmen to serve in her forces against the Central Powers. (Defending plucky little Belgium was the rallying cry there.) Suvla and Sud (Sedd)-El-Bar were two killing grounds of the Gallipoli campaign.

The line about Britannia’s Huns and their long-range guns pretty much sums up the dénouement.

Pour yourself a drop of something, crank up the volume and let yourself for a few moments consider the men and women who took a stand for Ireland. (Look—the insurrection lasted five days; we're authorized.)

Then you can get back to your golden oldies and your appletinis.

Gratitude Monday: Metro medical

It’s a small thing, but today I’m grateful that I was able to find a doctor (despite the best efforts of my health insurer’s provider directory), get an appointment within a week of my call and then maneuver my way there using the Metrobus system.

Some days, the small things are big.

Easter 1916

Easter Monday this year marks the centenary of what’s come to be known as the Easter Rising in Ireland, the last of a string of rebellions against British rule and the one that led to the beginning of Irish independence.

(Irish independence, BTW, is still a work in progress.)

Technically, it won’t be 100 years on until 24 April, but the event was inextricably linked with Eastertide, so I’m writing about it today.

The Rising itself was what some of my friends might call a bit of a cluster fuck—on both sides of the barricades. First of all, you can’t get two Irishmen to agree on much of anything, and when you expand the two out to a few score, a few hundred or a few thousand the problem increases by an order of magnitude. Ever since the Act of Union in 1800, which abolished an independent Irish parliament, half of the struggle against Mother England was between different factions of Irish over what the goals were and then how to achieve them. (If you know anything about the Second World War, think all the flavors of resistance organizations in France; then multiply it by 110 years.)

By the outbreak of World War I, many of the anti-British parties literally weren’t speaking to one another. Moreover, they couldn’t agree on how to respond to the threat of Imperial Germany—actually, they couldn’t even agree on whether there was a threat from Imperial Germany. Many of them thought that if they showed themselves to be good sports and rallied to the British imperial cause, they’d be rewarded with the long-promised independence.

Others followed the mantra, “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.”

And there was difficulty indeed after a year and a half in the mud of Belgium and Northern France, and one year after the disaster at Gallipoli. By 1916 these meat grinders had consumed so many men that Britain was brought to introduce conscription for the first time, including men from Ireland.

More than 250,000 Irish volunteers fought for Britain between 1914 and 1918. The idea that they could be forced to do this was infuriating on many levels to people who’d heretofore been neutral or positive about the war, even as it seemed only one’s duty to many others. Internal conflicts flared up throughout Ireland about how to respond. Even those who agreed that insurrection was appropriate disagreed on how and when it should be launched.

As the time came for implementing conscription, the Irish Volunteers (considered by many to be radical) and the Irish Citizen Army (socialists and even more radical) were so at odds with one another that the Volunteers sent out the call to arms in code in an attempt to pull off the rising without the Citizen Army either joining or interfering with it.

Seriously—can you imagine?

Actually, here’s what you have to imagine: a couple thousand (at most) civilians—think your average whack-job militia-posse-comitatus types, some of whom may have had some military drill training—almost none with actual experience firing weapons at other men, who have never foregathered more than maybe a hundred at a time, because all their activities have had to be in secret. They’re pinning their hopes on substantial support (arms, money, supplies) from Germany, which would have to send said support through waters pretty much held by the Royal Navy. And on Britain being too occupied with the sinkhole in the Western Front to respond in force. And on the overall population of Ireland rising up with them (with even less military experience and no weapons).

And they expected to win the battle(s) and sustain the victory moving forward. Meaning, they expected Britain to acknowledge defeat and let the island at its back become independent. And allied to Germany.

Well—very gallant, very high-minded. Very crackbrained and very costly.

On the other side, the Brits suffered from their own dysfunction. They had intelligence around the shipment of arms (small arms) to various rebel groups, but didn’t act on it. It wasn’t until the Volunteers seized the General Post Office in Dublin (the only city where they achieved any sort of success), proclaimed the Irish Republic and settled in that the British Took Measures. By which I mean, within a few days they had more than 16,000 soldiers in Dublin (against fewer than 1300 Irish irregulars) and were lobbing heavy artillery shells into the center of the city, which was largely destroyed.

Here’s the thing, dear reader: in a fight where both sides have their heads up their butts, the side with the preponderance of resources is, generally speaking, going to win. Because they can afford to lose more soldiers and time than the other side. And this is what happened in Ireland.

Of the 500 or so killed between 24 April and 29 April, (when the Volunteers surrendered), most were civilians; most of whom were victims of the bombardment. Thirty percent of the casualties were British soldiers. (It’s interesting to me that one of the costlier engagements for them was an attempt by the Sherwood Foresters to cross the canal at Mount Street; there were other ways for them to get to their destination but their commander ordered repeated frontal assaults right there. Where there was a perfect crossfire. Seventeen Volunteers cost the Foresters 240 casualties, killed and wounded. But I digress.)

It was after the surrender that things got weird. The uprising had not been popular among the Irish, either before or during the event. As they were being marched off to Kilmainham Gaol, many of them had to be defended from mobs by the British soldiers. But the heavy-handed response, starting with the shelling of Dublin, accomplished what the schoolteachers, civil servants, bakers and poets couldn’t.

The Brits executed by firing squad 15 of the leaders in a matter of days. One, Joseph Connelly, was hauled to his death in a chair because his ankle had been shattered in the fighting and he couldn’t stand up. From being vilified as idiots and scum, the 15 became martyrs.

The British arrested more than 3000 suspected of “supporting” the insurrection; 1500 were imprisoned in Britain without trial. (Many of them had not only had nothing to do with the rising, they’d been opposed to it.) Martial law was declared throughout Ireland and not lifted until autumn.

So in the course of winning the battle, the Brits lost the war—or as close as dammit. The Irish Free State—26 of the 32 counties—was created by treaty in 1922 and became the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

I do not view this event through rose-colored glasses. I happen to agree with the goals of the men and women of Easter Monday, even if I do think they were criminally naïve in their execution. I also understand that there was no way the Brits were not going to crush the rebellion by any means necessary. And the preponderance of resources combined with the willingness to use them is very hard to argue successfully with.

So—celebrate the centenary, lift a pint, sing a rebel song. But do remember that one man’s martyr is another man’s jihadist, and consider what lessons we might learn from Easter 1916.