Of War and Sunlight

I went to book club tonight for the first time in a long time. One of our members had suggested we read the poetry of Louis MacNeice, one of Northern Ireland’s great poets. The collection was edited by W.H. Auden, MacNeice’s contemporary and fellow war poet. The theme running through the poems we read were how beauty and sorrow, tragedy and joy are twinned in disturbing ways.

I have always felt I’m too linear and too literal to appreciate poetry. I so often don’t understand what the writer is trying to convey in their allegorical, abstract verses. It was wonderful to be in a group where we read the poems out loud and shared the meaning we found in each.

As a child, MacNeice watched thousands of men muster on the fields near his home then march off to WWI, never to return. He would have been in his late 20s, early 30s during WWII. So his writing is understandably grim. Here’s one of his poems, The Sunlight on the Garden:

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
Where all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advanecs towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have not time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.

One of my fellow book club members informed me the Egypt reference was from Anthony and Cleopatra--it helps having literary friends.
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