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Contributor: Sean Morrissey As we commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day on May 8th, a poem from World War II veteran Alan Dugan is appropriate. Dugan served in the U.S. Air Force during the last stages of the war, an experience he described as “crucial” to his own life’s trajectory and development.
Dugan’s “Aubade: Chant of the Innocents” lays out the gentle reflection of its speaker, a serviceman long-home and looking back on those crucial years when tomorrow’s fate remained an open question. It reads as if from the other side and yet, at the time of writing and the poem’s first publication in January 1945, the world and this soldier-poet were both still very much at war. I shall arise in the morning and make my bed. I shall walk to the door and admire things. I shall remember neither the sick mornings When eyeballs grated on the lid, And the mind clenched, refused to breathe, Or mumble and cough over small indigestible portions of dreams, Nor your frayed voice, speaking also in the morning To the mirror of its self, saying, What terrible days we must expect to endure As a price for this decay around us; For these contortions we have, Until the time that I can say; All in all I remember it (and you) With a good deal of nostalgia, I shall mop the floor and stand reveille, And when the hangar doors open in a huge yawn I shall enter its noisy intestines To perform the function for which I am best fitted. I shall stand with mechanics, grouped like surgeons Over the engine. (whose black blood Will camouflage fumbles, delicacy, Waving of words and change all hands Into ratchets, wrenches and soft, ineffectual mallets.) I shall work with pleasure in great intensity. I shall say, Good morning. Good morning. What a fine morning. Note the even keeled tone of the poem and its focus on those mundane domesticities of life; the simple joy of labour and one’s being part of the big picture (standing “with mechanics, grouped like surgeons / over the engine). Above all, though, Dugan’s poem speaks to the innate resilience of humanity, that even during periods of great fear and uncertainty we hold out hope toward the light.
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Contributor: Sean Morrissey First published in 1855, the following (known most commonly as “This is What you Shall Do”) served as preface to American poet Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Whitman, whose ethos of compassion and humanity would coincide with a most inhumane period of history in the United States, speaks to our enduring need for community.
This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. There is a repetitious, incantatory quality here, as if the poet were giving a sermon on the righteous life; one full of love, introspection, and freedom. These are inalienable human rights, and a far-away privilege for those millions living through war, poverty, and famine around the world: it is for those we must fight and give alms every day. |
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