blog # 2

The two poems, “Easter, 1916” by Yeats and “Returning We Hear Larks” by Rosenberg, both portray a different view of war. In Yeats’ poem, it seems that he is talking more about the beauty of war while Rosenberg paints a portrait of misery that is only lightened by the sounds of the larks. At any minute that noise could be bombs or some other terror but the sounds of the birds help to calm the soldiers. Rosenberg likes to use similes in his poem to help you to paint the portrait as well as Yeats, who does it to compare the feelings that he has towards war to things that are more beautiful. “that is Heaven’s part, our part to murmur name upon name, as a mother names her child when sleep at last has come on limbs that have run wild (Yeats)”.

These poems compare to us because there are many hardships that people face everyday and there is always that one thing that gives us hope even when we think that there is none. Not specifically towards war, but Rosenberg’s example of the larks effect on the soldiers, shows an example of this that can be seen in many different aspects of life.

Contemporary poem

A taste of Afghanistan

Rob Densmore first went to Afghanistan in 2004 with the US navy. he returned in 2007 as a freelance journalist particularly concerned about the effects of the turmoil on people. He then did a Masters degree in London in War and Psychiatry returning in 2008 to conduct research on mental health in private security contractors.

His stories, interviews, and poems deal mostly with the content and historical perspective of these trips - but "with the human element in mind".

A taste of Afghanistan

City sand has its own taste

Not the country’s dust,

But darker.

It’s stronger – bitter parts

Under infantry foot.

Under 500 years going and coming.

Kipling’s finest up and over –

Through the pass,

Through the places where soldiers stood

In stolid white snow.

Cemeteries in the pass where Alexander’s own

Fell on the square rocks.

Paved with smoothed over river rock,

This open grave – white, bare.

Kabul sand polishes everyone’s edges.

Tajiks sharp on the cusp

And Northern Alliance coming down

Hard in the fray.

They all want each other’s throats.

Their wives lost in the fight –

Save for pointed heels and

Gold bangled over fine red henna.

Eastern sand and southern sand,

Pakistan sand crooked as broken teeth,

Herati sand pure and rising to the top.

Nothing mixes and there is no space in between.

If God loved this place he doesn’t now.

If He breathed in the brass bullet casings

And the diesel air and spiteful prayers.

A place for lust and dirty children

And the things night can hide.

What things grown men can hide-

In the dark corners of their own children’s rooms.

In the big shadows of a capital with no master and no disciple.

No scope for all things to come together

The sand and the dust and the dirt that makes things grow-

When it is left alone.

But we’ve put our fingers in it

And the stirring and stamping won’t leave

Much for the growing.

Dust bowls and cyclone air will take the rest.

Every village is filled with it now –

Dust from our bombs and inside our APCs.

Dirt scrubbed from our rifle actions

And ground into our sweaty palms like Mississippi silt.

And still nothing grows.

I’ve taken a knee in seventeen villages –

On street corners and broken down roundabouts,

On highways and in shattered homes.

On helo pads and plywood chapel steps,

On the backs of dead men-

And screaming vile women.

They will, all of them, bend or break –

It is either them or me.

It’s either winning or losing

And putting in its place

What does not belong,

Sand of a different taste and hue

That cannot tell me it is sorry.

Rob Densmore, 2009