Dancing by the Light of the Moon Read online

  The warm-handled racket is back in its press,

  But my shock-headed victor, she loves me no less.

  Her father’s euonymus shines as we walk,

  And swing past the summer-house, buried in talk,

  And cool the verandah that welcomes us in

  To the six-o’clock news and a lime-juice and gin.

  The scent of the conifers, sound of the bath,

  The view from my bedroom of moss-dappled path,

  As I struggle with double-end evening tie,

  For we dance at the Golf Club, my victor and I.

  On the floor of her bedroom lie blazer and shorts

  And the cream-coloured walls are be-trophied with sports,

  And westering, questioning settles the sun,

  On your low-leaded window, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

  The Hillman is waiting, the light’s in the hall,

  The pictures of Egypt are bright on the wall,

  My sweet, I am standing beside the oak stair

  And there on the landing’s the light on your hair.

  By roads ‘not adopted’, by woodlanded ways,

  She drove to the club in the late summer haze,

  Into nine-o’clock Camberley, heavy with bells

  And mushroomy, pine-woody, evergreen smells.

  Miss Joan Hunter Dunn, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,

  I can hear from the car park the dance has begun,

  Oh! full Surrey twilight! importunate band!

  Oh! strongly adorable tennis-girl’s hand!

  Around us are Rovers and Austins afar,

  Above us the intimate roof of the car,

  And here on my right is the girl of my choice,

  With the tilt of her nose and the chime of her voice.

  And the scent of her wrap, and the words never said,

  And the ominous, ominous dancing ahead.

  We sat in the car park till twenty to one

  And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.

  Growing Pain

  by Vernon Scannell

  (1922–2007)

  The boy was barely five years old.

  We sent him to the little school

  And left him there to learn the names

  Of flowers in jam jars on the sill

  And learn to do as he was told.

  He seemed quite happy there until

  Three weeks afterwards, at night,

  The darkness whimpered in his room.

  I went upstairs, switched on his light,

  And found him wide awake, distraught,

  Sheets mangled and his eiderdown

  Untidy carpet on the floor.

  I said, ‘Why can’t you sleep? A pain?’

  He snuffled, gave a little moan,

  And then he spoke a single word:

  ‘Jessica.’ The sound was blurred.

  ‘Jessica? What do you mean?’

  ‘A girl at school called Jessica.

  She hurts –’ He touched himself between

  The heart and stomach ‘– she has been

  Aching here and I can see her.’

  Nothing I had read or heard

  Instructed me in what to do.

  I covered him and stroked his head.

  ‘The pain will go, in time,’ I said.

  In the palm of his hand

  by Connie Bensley

  (born 1929)

  I’m in love, I’m in love!

  I know – I’ve cried Wolf before

  but this time it’s true.

  I’m in for the full agony:

  the contrived encounters:

  the heart-shock of the doorbell,

  the new meaning to life; the new lingerie.

  How do I know it will get that far?

  Because of his meaningful look

  When he weighs my mange-tout, my pink fir apples.

  Because he slips an extra nectarine into my basket.

  Because on Tuesday he offered to deliver

  to me personally, and he wrote my address

  in the palm of his hand.

  I Long to Hold Some Lady

  by Leonard Cohen

  (1934–2016)

  I long to hold some lady

  For my love is far away,

  And will not come tomorrow

  And was not here today.

  There is no flesh so perfect

  As on my lady’s bone,

  And yet it seems so distant

  When I am all alone:

  As though she were a masterpiece

  In some castled town,

  That pilgrims come to visit

  And priests to copy down.

  Alas, I cannot travel

  To a love I have so deep

  Or sleep too close beside

  A love I want to keep.

  But I long to hold some lady,

  For flesh is warm and sweet.

  Cold skeletons go marching

  Each night beside my feet.

  Dusting the Phone

  by Jackie Kay

  (born 1961)

  I am spending my time imagining the worst that could happen.

  I know this is not a good idea, and that being in love, I could be

  spending my time going over the best that has been happening.

  The phone rings heralding some disaster. Sirens.

  Or it doesn’t ring which also means disaster. Sirens.

  In which case, who would ring me to tell? Nobody knows.

  The future is a long gloved hand. An empty cup.

  A marriage. A full house. One night per week

  in stranger’s white sheets. Forget tomorrow,

  You say, don’t mention love. I try. It doesn’t work.

  I assault the postman for a letter. I look for flowers.

  I go over and over our times together, re-read them.

  This very second I am waiting on the phone.

  Silver service. I polish it. I dress for it.

  I’ll give it extra in return for your call.

  Infuriatingly, it sends me hoaxes, wrong numbers;

  or worse, calls from boring people. Your voice

  disappears into my lonely cotton sheets.

  I am trapped in it. I can’t move. I want you.

  All the time. This is awful – only a photo.

  Come on, damn you, ring me. Or else. What?

  I don’t know what.

  4. ‘Then a soldier’

  The most famous anthology of poetry compiled by a soldier is probably Other Men’s Flowers, a collection of poems brought together and published by Field Marshal Archibald Percival Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell, in 1944. Wavell (1883–1950) served in the Second Boer War, the First World War (during which he was wounded in the Second Battle of Ypres) and in the Second World War, when he was initially Commander-in-Chief Middle East and, later, Commander-in-Chief India. Both my father and maternal grandfather served under him and admired him, although he was a controversial figure and, as a general, knew failure as well as success. The great love – and solace – of his life was poetry. In every battle, from the Boer War onwards, he had a book of poetry at his side. He had a prodigious memory and scores of the poems he included in Other Men’s Flowers were ones that he knew by heart. He believed in the power of poetry to keep men sane and steady. Somewhat gruff and awkward in manner, and not especially articulate himself, he expressed himself through speaking poetry out loud. In 1961, eleven years after Wavell’s death, T. S. Eliot wrote: ‘I do not pretend to be a judge of Wavell as a soldier … What I do know from personal acquaintance with the man, is that he was a great man. This is not a term I use easily.’

  I trust Wavell would have approved of the six poems I have chosen here – war poems to learn by heart and to speak out loud. ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ was written by the Poet Laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in 1854, after the British army’s Light Cavalry Brigade suffered great casualties at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. Field Marshal Lord
Wavell knew the poem by heart. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, recorded it on a wax cylinder in 1890, and on YouTube and in the archives of the British Library you can hear his powerful and passionate rendering of the poem. The other five poems all relate to the First World War – in which Wavell won the Military Cross and was mentioned in dispatches. They are contrasting poems, inspired by war ‘and the pity of war’ (in Wilfred Owen’s famous phrase), but quite different in tone and approach. They are by A. E. Housman, Siegfried Sassoon, May Wedderburn Cannan, Owen (who was killed in combat on 4 November 1918 – a week before the Armistice) and Rupert Brooke (who died in Greece in 1915, having developed blood poisoning following an insect bite). The four men are famous: May Wedderburn Cannan less so. In 1911, aged eighteen, she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, training as a nurse and eventually reaching the rank of quartermaster. During the war, she went to Rouen in the spring of 1915, helping to run the canteen at the railhead there. Philip Larkin loved her poem ‘Rouen’, saying it ‘had all the warmth and idealism of the VADs in the First World War. I find it enchanting.’

  For a contemporary poem about the reality of soldiering I recommend ‘Ballad of a Hero’, a beautiful poem by the performance poet, Kate Tempest (born 1985). It begins:

  Your Daddy is a soldier son,

  Your Daddy’s gone to War,

  His steady hands they hold his gun,

  His aim is keen and sure.

  It’s too long to include here, but it is one of the poems featured in my list of longer poems to learn by heart on page 421–2.

  The Charge of the Light Brigade

  by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

  (1809–92)

  I

  Half a league, half a league,

  Half a league onward,

  All in the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!

  Charge for the guns!’ he said:

  Into the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  II

  ‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’

  Was there a man dismay’d?

  Not tho’ the soldier knew

  Some one had blunder’d.

  Their’s not to make reply,

  Their’s not to reason why,

  Their’s but to do and die:

  Into the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  III

  Cannon to right of them,

  Cannon to left of them,

  Cannon in front of them

  Volley’d and thunder’d;

  Storm’d at with shot and shell,

  Boldly they rode and well,

  Into the jaws of Death,

  Into the mouth of Hell

  Rode the six hundred.

  IV

  Flash’d all their sabres bare,

  Flash’d as they turn’d in air

  Sabring the gunners there,

  Charging an army, while

  All the world wonder’d.

  Plunged in the battery-smoke

  Right thro’ the line they broke;

  Cossack and Russian

  Reel’d from the sabre-stroke

  Shatter’d and sunder’d.

  Then they rode back, but not

  Not the six hundred.

  V

  Cannon to right of them,

  Cannon to left of them,

  Cannon behind them

  Volley’d and thunder’d;

  Storm’d at with shot and shell,

  While horse and hero fell,

  They that had fought so well

  Came thro’ the jaws of Death,

  Back from the mouth of Hell,

  All that was left of them,

  Left of six hundred.

  VI

  When can their glory fade?

  O the wild charge they made!

  All the world wonder’d.

  Honour the charge they made!

  Honour the Light Brigade,

  Noble six hundred!

  Here Dead We Lie

  by A. E. Housman

  (1859–1936)

  Here dead lie we because we did not choose

  To live and shame the land from which we sprung.

  Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose,

  But young men think it is, and we were young.

  Everyone Sang

  by Sieg fried Sassoon

  (1886–1967)

  Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

  And I was filled with such delight

  As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

  Winging wildly across the white

  Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

  Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

  And beauty came like the setting sun:

  My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

  Drifted away … O, but Everyone

  Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

  Rouen

  April 26–May 25, 1915

  by May Wedderburn Cannan

  (1893–1973)fn1

  Early morning over Rouen, hopeful, high, courageous morning,

  And the laughter of adventure and the steepness of the stair,

  And the dawn across the river, and the wind across the bridges,

  And the empty littered station and the tired people there.

  Can you recall those mornings and the hurry of awakening,

  And the long-forgotten wonder if we should miss the way,

  And the unfamiliar faces, and the coming of provisions,

  And the freshness and the glory of the labour of the day?

  Hot noontide over Rouen, and the sun upon the city,

  Sun and dust unceasing, and the glare of cloudless skies,

  And the voices of the Indians and the endless stream of soldiers,

  And the clicking of the tatties, and the buzzing of the flies.

  Can you recall those noontides and the reek of steam and coffee,

  Heavy-laden noontides with the evening’s peace to win,

  And the little piles of woodbines, and the sticky soda bottles,

  And the crushes in the ‘Parlour’, and the letters coming in?

  Quiet night-time over Rouen, and the station full of soldiers,

  All the youth and pride of England from the ends of all the earth;

  And the rifles piled together, and the creaking of the sword-belts,

  And the faces bent above them, and the gay, heart-breaking mirth.

  Can I forget the passage from the cool white-bedded Aid Post

  Past the long sun-blistered coaches of the khaki Red Cross train

  To the truck train full of wounded, and the weariness and laughter,

  And ‘Good-bye, and thank you, Sister’, and the empty yards again?

  Can you recall the parcels that we made them for the railroad,

  Crammed and bulging parcels held together by their string,

  And the voices of the sergeants who called the Drafts together,

  And the agony and splendour when they stood to save the King?

  Can you forget their passing, the cheering and the waving,

  The little group of people at the doorway of the shed,

  The sudden awful silence when the last train swung to darkness,

  And the lonely desolation, and the mocking stars o’erhead?

  Can you recall the midnights, and the footsteps of night watchers,

  Men who came from darkness and went back to dark again,

  And the shadows on the rail-lines and the all inglorious labour,

  And the promise of the daylight firing blue the window-pane?

  Can you recall the passing through the kitchen door to morning,

  Morning very still and solemn breaking slowly on the town,

  And the early coastways engines that had met the ships at daybreak,

  And the Drafts just out from England, and the day shift comin
g down?

  Can you forget returning slowly, stumbling on the cobbles,

  And the white-decked Red Cross barges dropping seawards for the tide,

  And the search for English papers, and the blessed cool of water,

  And the peace of half-closed shutters that shut out the world outside?

  Can I forget the evenings and the sunsets on the island,

  And the tall black ships at anchor far below our balcony,

  And the distant call of bugles, and the white wine in the glasses,

  And the long line of the street lamps, stretching Eastwards to the sea?

  … When the world slips slow to darkness, when the office fire burns lower,

  My heart goes out to Rouen, Rouen all the world away;

  When other men remember I remember our Adventure

  And the trains that go from Rouen at the ending of the day.

  Anthem for Doomed Youth

  by Wilfred Owen

  (1893–1918)

  What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

  Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

  Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

  Can patter out their hasty orisons.

  No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

  Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, –

  The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

  And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

  What candles may be held to speed them all?

  Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

  Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

  The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

  Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

  And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

  The Soldier

  by Rupert Brooke

  (1887–1915)

  If I should die, think only this of me:

  That there’s some corner of a foreign field

  That is for ever England. There shall be

  In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

  A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

  Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,