I wanted to share this little poem that was written to be from the perspective of a WWI soldier visiting what used to be a battle site. In the fall, UMW’s Chamber Choir (that includes me) performed this piece, and I fell in love with the text. The text is titled “A Sonnet: to Wilfred Owen”. Given that we’re meant to read Owen for next class, I figured it was at least a little appropriate. It appears it was written only for the piece, which is titled “The Front”, so I could only find it on the sheet music’s home page. The piece itself, along with the poem, was written and released in January 2020. I think it’s interesting to look at this poem, knowing that Matthew Taylor King, as far as I could find, was quite young, and thus was not a part of WWI in any way. The music piece itself is also incredibly moving. I’ll include a link to a video of it if you want to check that out. Anyways, I’ve been rambling. I just wanted to share 🙂
A Sonnet to Wilfred Owen:
Have you seen the Front? It is not as it
Used to be. Larks sing. Shells rust. Fevers cool.
The Winter of the world is in tacit
Armistice with Spring. Living waters pool
In tired foxholes. Proud young forests shelter
No man’s land. Moss gilds sandbags, else they spill.
Mine-sunk craters yield to ponds where elder
Turtles sun themselves, warm amid Aisne’s chill.
Only the mud is as it was—partout.
It clings to every sole. But certain fields
Block the charging sludge. In them, marble shields
—Or are they dragon’s teeth?—mark you, guard you
From the mire. You rest. Your dagger’s sheathed. And yet:
How swiftly Nature heals; how slowly men forget.
-Matthew Taylor King
Wow! I really like it, it is very moving, the lyrics or words, “Only the mud is as it was—partout.
It clings to every sole. But certain fields”
Even the instruments that they use show the hurt, the death of the war. It is well performed. I imagine hearing it in person sounds beautiful.
Something interesting about the “it clings to every sole” line when translating from the text to the song… when we received our copies, it was the first ever edition of SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) version, and as a result, had a few changes or typos. One of them was that we had that line written as “it clings to every soul; it clings to every sole”, sung one right after the other. Although we were told it was just a typo, I felt like it actually stuck to the theme of the poem better. The trauma that soldiers faced during WWI was so deep and scarring that, much like the mud, it clung to the soul and never let go
This was really moving! ^I agree the instruments do an incredible job of portraying the tone and drawing the audience in. The fact that this is a recent work really shows what a profound impact The Great War and war in general has on future generations. People today still feel moved by and connected to the war enough to create beautiful works like this despite as you mentioned a lack of direct connection to the conflict. It makes me wonder how long the effects of COVID will linger. There are not many works about the flu pandemic from its time period or today, but that could be more a result of the war overshadowing it. Will people in 100 years write about the isolation of quarantine or will it mostly just be a study of what we produced during the experience?
These lines – “You rest. Your dagger’s sheathed. And yet:
How swiftly Nature heals; how slowly men forget.” remind me of After the War by May Wedderburn Cannan –
“After the War perhaps I’ll sit again
Out on the terrace where I sat with you,
And see the changeless sky and hills beat blue
And live an afternoon of summer through.
I shall remember then, and sad at heart
For the lost day of happiness we knew,
Wish only that some other man were you
And spoke my name as once you used to do.”
I read this poem a few days ago searching through the anthology for my final, and it’s been stuck in my head much like King’s has stuck with you. I think there’s something incredible and profound about the mirrored focus of people on the restoration of nature in the wake of an unshakeable human memory even across generations, but I don’t have much more to say than that. Thank you for sharing this with us, Sonia.