Dee Evetts
Essay #4 July/Aug 2021
Before returning to the front, so to speak, I would like first of all to revisit the haiku by Miriam Sagan with which I concluded my previous essay:
I remember
your braid —
girl gone to soldier
There is a finely judged sadness in this haiku, to my ear. We do not know the context of the poet’s reminiscence, which suggests the voice of an aunt or perhaps a close family friend. Behind the keen sense of loss there may yet be acceptance of the inevitable surrender of childish innocence to full adulthood.
Returning now to the theatre of war (could there be a more revealing expression?) and in particular to the trenches, my searches have turned up four poems in particular that must not be passed over. The first two are by Ty Hadman, both of these from his collection Dong Ha Haiku published in 1982. The second pair were written by Lenard D. Moore and Mirko Vidovic.
rain soaked and cold waiting in ambush
without moving an inch our hands touch as he hands me
I let the warm urine flow an extra grenade
midday heat virile young men
soldiers on both sides shooting their semen out
roll up their sleeves in the trenches
Hadman’s “rain soaked and cold” is frighteningly vivid. Someone has suggested to me that we cannot assume this situation to be in a war context. His caveat was that the subject could be pinned down by a violent storm while hiking or climbing. This is narrowly plausible, I admit – but I don’t buy it. There is a sense of mortal danger here, and a fierce determination to survive. This aside from the fact that the provenance of the poem effectively rules out any other interpretation. Hadman’s second haiku is unusual in that it involves primarily the sense of touch: here are two people making physical contact in a combat situation. We might speculate that this is an aspect of their training, as being the fastest and most secure way of making such an important transfer. But I feel there is something more fundamental at work. The word “hand” appearing twice in the long middle line (which enhances the stretch) used first as a noun and then as a verb – could easily have been avoided. But the poet chose not to do so, and this tells us it was purposeful. I find that the deliberate iteration reinforces the unexpected intimacy of the action, enhancing the humanity and vulnerability of the two men and pinpointing how critically their lives depend upon one another in this moment.
In the second pair of poems we find ourselves further away from the immediate combat zone. Moore’s “midday heat” reminds us that regions of conflict are as much affected by the weather as any other part of the world. He conjures a touching echo of these men’s domestic lives – from which they are now far removed – while the phrase “on both sides” affirms what is common to us all, regardless of nationality or allegiance. The last poem of the quartet speaks of the need for sexual release and relief that is by no means put on hold because of a war. While the scene is banal, there is also something wrenching in the unspoken knowledge that underlies it: some of these men will never father the sons and daughters that they may have imagined.
Withdrawing from the front line just a few more miles – let us suppose – we receive these glimpses, offered by Vidovic again and by Rujana Matuka:
kalashnikovs since the early morning
cut short the tapping shadowing a young soldier
of the woodpecker a stray dog
Both of these haiku evoke the proximity of war – which is conceivably as close as the next village. In the first of these poems there is a feeling that the conflict is drawing closer, while the second seems more likely to take place in territory that has been gained and occupied. But this could work either way.
Vaulting in time to a post-war world, following are some observations made by Bonnie Stepenoff, Cynthia Rowe, and and Elizabeth McCunn-Tetangko:
next to me in the park war veteran. . .
feeding the ducks lobbing grain
the unknown soldier at his hens
dogs
sleeping on the porch
after the war
I find Stepenoff’s haiku especially moving on account of its subtle use of the term “unknown soldier”. By giving us a glimpse of just one, her poem celebrates all the soldiers who survived the war and have in one sense become anonymous again (perhaps gladly so) in returning to their peacetime lives. At the same time there is a suggestion that any one of these could have become an actual Unknown Soldier, with their remains interred in Westminster Abbey or Arlington Cemetery. Rowe’s poem shows a more active veteran tending to his chickens in a scene of apparent contentment. But we can be assured Rowe has not chosen the word “lobbing” thoughtlessly. The third poem has a rare tranquility, reflecting relief and gratitude for a life that has returned to normal. (In our present time we can very easily relate to that.) There could be a hint nonetheless of the undeniable fact: there has never yet been a war to end all wars.
It had been my intention to close this essay with a terse and enigmatic one-liner by Martin Paetsch:
the war keeps ending elderberries
Does this poem refer to a particular war that refuses to end, dragging out the general fatigue, as well as disillusion with the commanders and statesmen who keep promising the end – but after one last push? And what about these elderberries? Do they represent (beyond the poet’s immediate experience, that is) a longing for the normal, and the everyday blooming of the natural world? Or is this a broader comment on the fact that there is always a war going on somewhere? I’ll gladly take any – and preferably all – of the above interpretations.
I am going to depart from the received convention by hazarding a recent draft of my own – a piece that is almost certainly still evolving. In it I seek to address not just one of my own earliest memories, but also the way in which the context of war shapes even the youngest minds and their perceptions concerning other people in this patchwork world.
from a distance
I watch the German prisoner
dig our garden
It would be twelve years before I knowingly encountered any other Germans. When this happened, it took the form of three young brothers looking for a place to pitch their tent for the night. My own brother and I took them home, taking it for granted that our mother would let them camp in our garden. This she willingly did, and invited them for supper at the same time. Being Dutch, she also spoke good German. So it was that in the course of a single convivial evening, despite following hardly a word of what was said, I shed my vague fears and prejudices regarding our former enemies.
[You can send any thoughts/feedback on this essay to the Editor, who will ensure they are passed
on to Dee: editor@tsuridōrō.org]
