Kennneth Slessor - Beach Burial

Retaining a Naval theme, I’m going to go from light-hearted verse (Bab Ballads) to one of Kenneth Slessor’s most famous poems, a poem of great pity, and one that plays on my mind.  The poem is Beach Burial.  Slessor wrote this when he was a war correspondent covering Australian soldiers fighting in the Middle East theatre, WWII, 1942.  Even if you knew nothing of Slessor’s life, a reading of the poem makes it obvious that the poet has observed and experienced what he is writing about – obvious that he has listened to gunfire, near and in the distance, the sob and clubbing; obvious that he has looked on rough wooden crosses in the sand, the driven stake of tidewood.  And this is borne out in Kenneth Slessor’s own war despatches where the reports of what he witnessed, later appear in his poem - this from two of his despatches:-

"...for a few moments at a little cluster of Australian graves. They were huddled together, as if taking cover on the slope of a hill... The crosses were the simple sides of packing cases nailed at right angles and the inscriptions, written with careful clumsiness in indelible pencil, had been smeared violet by the rain"...(War Despatches, 262).  "A beach in the Gulf of Arabs, two miles from El Alamein, dazzle-white in the morning sunlight and lined with slabs of driftwood over the sandy graves of 'unknown sailors' washed up in dozens with the tide. The guns were clubbing away in the west"..(War Despatches, 394).
Maybe I'm wrong, but I come across numerous analyses of Beach Burial where people seem to want more meaning from the poem than I believe the poem contains - 'futility of war'; 'man's inhumanity to man'; 'bravery, love, sacrifice, dignity, non-judgemental neutrality of those going out and burying the dead'; 'the folly of people allowing themselves to be fooled by political deception'; 'the opposing struggle of good against evil and final forgiveness in the uniting of all peoples on the other front' - etcetera, etcetera.  Why must we think there has to be profound meaning lurking in every great poem!?  To me, in Beach Burial Slessor writes 'meaning' just as he saw it; - go back and read his despatches.  I get a feeling of great pity from the poem, but I believe this is created from the brilliant construction and form that Slessor renders in the poem rather than any 'meaning' he has woven or wishes to express in content. 
If I were a year 12 student again, then I would accept the content of Beach Burial for what it says, and use it as a poem that shows me a lot about construction.  What strikes me in the construction of the poem is the use of part-rhyme and the repetition of sounds.  Part-rhyme at the end of the second and fourth lines of each quatrain and within every third line. Five beats to each verse first line (trochee feet?).  The repetition of dominant sounds – ‘signature’, ‘driven’, ‘written’, ‘perplexity’, ‘pity’, ‘begin’, ‘pencil’, ‘drips’, ‘inscriptions’, ‘lips’……….

Beach Burial

(Kenneth Slessor, 1901 - 1971)

 

Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs

The convoys of dead sailors come;

At night they sway and wander in the waters far under,

But morning rolls them in the foam.

 

Between the sob and clubbing of the gunfire

Someone, it seems, has time for this,

To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows

And tread the sand upon their nakedness;

 

And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,

Bears the last signature of men,

Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,

The words choke as they begin –

 

‘Unknown seaman’ – the ghostly pencil

Wavers and fades, the purple drips,

The breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptions

As blue as drowned men’s lips,

 

Dead seaman, gone in search of the same landfall,

Whether as enemies they fought,

Or fought with us, or neither, the sand joins them together,

Enlisted on the other front.

 

El Alamein

 

It’s with a fair degree of humility that I now put my poem, With the Loss of Many Hands alongside Kenneth Slessor’s Beach Burial.  It’s a similar subject matter that influences me, but in no way do I render my poem with the skill of Slessor.  Though I do lay down a form by which I try to express the fear, forlorn and pity of men bonded in a ship’s company facing inevitable death as their ship goes down.  I don’t name any particular ship in the poem, but the influence is from reflection on two Australian Naval disasters - HMAS Sydney and HMAS Voyager.  HMAS Sydney was a WWII light cruiser ambushed and sunk by a German raider, Kormoran, in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia, 1941.  HMAS Voyager was a Daring class destroyer sunk in peace-time, 10^th February, 1964, when she collided with the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne during night exercises off Jervis Bay.

2011.  I reflect on the loss, and recent discovery of HMAS Sydney.  Also on the HMAS Voyager disaster (nearer to my time).  Both involved a heavy loss of life - 645 men on Sydney and 82 on Voyager.  An early photograph from the Sydney wreck was of a pair of black shoes (pusser’s crabs) sitting perfectly together on the seabed.  Who owned the shoes? and what is the feeling of being trapped, going down with a ship?  Accounts of the last moments of the forrard section of Voyager report that the coxswain, being too big to fit through the escape scuttle, helped others to get out and led the remainder in singing, up to the time the ship quickly disappeared.

HMAS Voyager

With the Loss of Many Hands 

Sight.

When we could see there was nobody else,

with damage reports giving stock of the situation,

the water-tight doors were dogged down tight,

never to be re-opened.

Emergency lanterns

discharged feeble light,

a tobacco stained orange glow

inches from the glass lens,

not enough to break the night,

but sufficient to illuminate

our patience and forlorn,

before that too faded from sight.

 

Sound.

 

There’s awful quiet when life leaves a ship.

Hull and fire pumps dead silent,

no whisper of air, down

trunking punkers, nothing.

Each clang of metal on metal,

creaking strained plates pound,

pulling against, and together

with forces beyond design, accentuated

now, no other sound

to muffle them.

Like a ship gone dead in dry-dock,

or gone aground,

or gone dead at four o’clock alongside.

Water filled and sloshed

until it’s level was found,

the sea’s noise trying to reach us,

gurgled on the other side of black bulkheads.

Somebody stepped up, bound

to take charge,

so there’s confidence of direction

and purpose in a frantic crowd,

but our purpose was steadily clear,

and the quiet,

not needed for repeated command,

lurked and pressed like a waiting ghost,

so the somebody

started us all singing aloud,

anything, not to have the awkwardness

of a silent world.

And we chose hymns for the sound.

 

Touch.

 

Wet body on wet body,

warm and alive,

thankful for company however much,

but also aware of personal annoyance,

because once familiar surfaces

now bumped and tripped in a mad crush,

where the urge was to come up from down below,

but the deck-head formed the ship’s side

and the distance athwart-ships became such

an impossible height, to

the only escape hatch above,

so hands grabbed hands, arms rough

tightened on the next pair of legs

and pushed up in a line-out,

the lightest and youngest were first, dispatched

with male love and encouragement,

come on son, out you go,

and they won’t forget the touch.

 

Smell.

 

With the blackness,

nostrils flared from adrenalin

sucked volumes, volumes expelled

in what was not breathing

but a demand we put on life’s gift.

Every now and then a familiar whiff tells

of hemp scent, wet from the bosun’s store,

turps, lagging and enamel sloshing in a paint locker

burnt out electrics and battery cells,

with brief reminder

of home comforts and security

by fresh baking and bedding smells.

 

Taste.

 

We thought we tasted the stale air

and fear,

until the first mouthful of waste

furnace oil,

and then it was only our tongues

we could taste.

                                                       J. O. White



HMAS Sydney

W. S. Gilbert - sailors, the sea and light verse

My last post has kept me in a mood for sharing tales about the sea served up with a wry twist of pusser’s humour.  For my influence I turn to William S. Gilbert (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame), who, many years ago wrote collections of light verse that were published as the ‘Bab Ballads’ – that was before he and Sullivan teamed up to produce those wonderful musicals, Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore, Mikado – the rest is history.  I’ve got an undated copy of Bab Ballads (Routledge; Morrison & Gibb printers), and I’m always on the look-out for a better edition.  Gilbert was not a naval or military man, but you can tell by his dealing with verse about ships and sailors that he’s not totally un-familiar with the services – perhaps his influence came from his father who was a Naval Surgeon, and also a writer.  One of Gilbert’s better known ballads from the collection is, The Yarn of the Nancy Bell.  The rhythm gets you in – a rollicking five to four beats like a lively sailor’s jig….

The Yarn of the ‘Nancy Bell’

(W. S. Gilbert 1836 - 1911)

 

‘Twas on the shores that round our coast

From Deal to Ramsgate span,

That I found alone on a piece of stone

An elderly naval man.

 

His hair was weedy, his beard was long,

And weedy and long was he,

And I heard this wight on the shore recite,

In a singular minor key:

 

“Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold,

And the mate of the Nancy brig,

And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,

And the crew of the captain’s gig”

 

And he shook his fists and he tore his hair,

Till I really felt afraid,

For I couldn’t help thinking the man had

been drinking,

And so I simply said:

 

“Oh, elderly man, it’s little I know

Of the duties of men of the sea,

And I’ll eat my hand if I understand

However you can be

 

“At once a cook, and a captain bold,

And the mate of the Nancy brig,

And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,

And the crew of the captain’s gig.”

 

Then he gave a hitch to his trousers,

which

Is a trick all seamen larn,

And having got rid of a thumping quid,

He spun his painful yarn:

 

“Twas in the good ship Nancy Bell

That we sailed to the Indian Sea,

And there on a reef we come to grief,

Which has often occurred to me.

 

“And pretty nigh all the crew was drowned

(There was seventy-seven o’ soul),

And only ten of the Nancy’s men

Said ‘Here!’ to the muster roll.

 

“There was me and the cook and the captain

bold,

And the mate of the Nancy brig,

And the bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite,

And the crew of the captain’s gig.

 

“For a month we’d neither vittles nor

drink,

Till a-hungry we did feel,

So we drawed a lot, and, accordin shot

The captain for our meal.

 

“The next lot fell to the Nancy’s mate,

And a delicate dish he made;

Then our appetite with the midshipmite

We seven survivors stayed ……….

 

............ There are another eleven verses to The Yarn of the Nancy Bell – I won’t include them here, so you’re going to have to get yourself a copy of ‘Bab Ballads’ to find out what happens.  I find myself often going back to the Bab Ballads to study metre – all of the ballads are strong.  I believe Gilbert wrote his verse with the intention of it being read out loud (thus the transition of his work into theatre and musicals).  In fact, at the time of the Bab Ballads people would recite them at parties and gatherings.  I like a poem you can recite.  But, then again, I like a poem you can read.  There’s a difference between reciting a poem out loud and reading a poem aloud.  A poem for recitation does need to have good metre; a poem with emotive depth is good when read aloud.  Is that the difference between poetry and verse?  That probably accounts for why Gilbert has qualified his Bab Ballads by stating underneath the title, “Much Sound and Little Sense”.

 

‘Much sound and little sense’ is a good lead in to my poem, The Day the Balloon went up.  I’m grateful to light verse poets like William Gilbert that I’m able to take some of the mad-cap memories from my Navy days and preserve and share them in written verse ………..

2009.  Sailors love to tell a yarn  -  ‘spin a dit’.  Sometimes they are true, sometimes they are variations of the truth.  In most cases, the ingredients for the recipe can be trusted  -  an ambitious First Lieutenant, a bunch of nervous boffins, a thick-head with a rifle and an upper-deck crowded with goofers.

The Day the Balloon went Up

At sea one day on our ship of grey,

The Jimmy made a blunder,

The Bosun’s Mate became irate,

And the Skipper roared like thunder.

 

It all began when the RAN,

Took a science team for a dawdle,

With instruments new, and costly too,

Tied beneath a big red bauble.

 

It was tossed in the air with professional care,

But the ball was over rated,

And sank to the sea, immediately,

Where it wallowed half deflated.

 

The scientists, wrung their wrists,

What to tell their boss and master,

Till the Skipper parked above the mark,

And said, ‘put a swimmer in the water’.

 

What a sight to see, the big AB,

Striking out for fame and glory,

With a heaving line tied to his spine,

Should have been the end of the story.

 

But the Jimmy paced, up and down the waist,

For he was in charge of the order,

So was very keen, to be the one seen,

Yelling threats of bloody murder.

 

Now it is the norm when swimmers form,

That a lookout stands with a rifle,

Ready to get any likely threat

Such as shark or deep sea turtle.

 

On this day, with regret to say,

The lookout’s name was Potter,

A cracking shot but not a lot,

Between his ears to hold grey matter.

 

He stands in a doze, a classic pose,

Vic Morrow’s younger brother,

Weapon on the hip with the safety trip,

But his mind’s in some place other.

 

Not the sort of stance to earn romance,

When the Jimmy spots a danger,

A bloody big snake about to make,

It’s mark upon his swimmer.

 

The Jimmy calls to the lookout stall,

In a voice made of barbed wire,

‘A snakes been seen on the starboard beam,

One hundred yards, on my command, fire!’

 

Time passes by as every eye,

Stays fixed on a spot out yonder,

Expecting a shot from good old Potts,

That will save our brave young swimmer.

 

The ship it lolls in a gentle roll,

Still nothing from the lookout station,

The Jimmy looks away to find the delay,

And is beaten by explanation.

 

What the Jimmy saw made his tonsils roar,

The lookout deep in slumber,

He spun on his heel and gave a squeal,

‘That man there, I want his bloody number!’

 

Panic sets in and the Jimmy begins,

To lose his calm composure,

‘Get the bloody snake! the nake! the snake! Get the snake!

Yes you idiot, up on the bridge enclosure!’

 

Snapped awake, Potter sights the snake,

Along the rifle at his shoulder,

Then the snake is dead with a shot to it’s head,

And Potter, he lives to be one year older.

 

Again relaxed, it’s the scientists pack

That the Jimmy once more resumes,

Above the clamour, he yells to the swimmer,

Now get the balloon! the balloon! Get the bloody balloon!

 

Suddenly, a rifle cracks a bullet smacks,

And everyone turns towards Potter,

Then as quickly back to the scientist’s pack,

But it’s sitting now at the bottom of the sea, and is flatter.

 

At sea one day on our ship of grey,

The Jimmy made a blunder,

The Bosun’s Mate became irate,

And the Skipper roared like thunder.

 

                                            J.O. White

 

John Masefield - Fever Chills

“I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky” ………. Oh yeah, I may mess around with poems about princes and alternate psychology, failed love and pets I’ve had, but after I’m done with all that, and I’m bored from being ashore and I’m bored with lubber prose then I’ve got to breathe salt air and taste the salty sea once more.  That’s when I turn to men like John Masefield.  And what better poem than Masefield’s Fever Chills to put me arm in arm again with characters doing their time at sea.  This is one of my favourite Masefield poems, the poor bastard at the bottom of the pecking order in a voice, a language and a behaviour that is absolutely historical in it’s preservation of how sailors once thought and talked ………. and hopefully, probably, still do.  I believe the 'Chief' in Fever Chills was still in when I was doing my time on Vendetta.

                                                          Fever-Chills

                                                                           (John Masfield 1878 - 1967)

 

He tottered from the alleyway with cheeks the colour

        of paste,

And shivered a spell and mopped his brow with a clout

        of cotton waste:

“I’ve got a lick of the fever-chills,” he said, “ ‘n’ my inside it’s

        green,

But I’d be as right as rain,” he said, “if I had some

        quinine, --

But there ain’t no quinine for us poor sailor-men.

 

“But them there passengers,” he said, “if they gets

        fever-chills,

There’s brimmin’ buckets o’ quinine for them, ‘n’ bulgin’

        crates o’ pills,

‘N’ a doctor with Latin ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ all – enough to sink

        a town,

‘N’ they lies quiet in their blushin’ bunks ‘n’ mops their

        gruel down, --

But there ain’t none ‘o them fine ways for us poor

        sailor-men.

 

But the Chief comes forrard ‘n’ he says, says he, ‘I

        gives you a straight tip:

Come none o’ your Cape Horn fever lays aboard o’ this

        yer ship.

On wi’ your rags o’ duds, my son, ‘n’ aft, ‘n’ down the

        hole:

The best cure known for fever-chills is shovelling bloody

        coal.’

It’s hard, my son, that’s what it is, for us poor sailor-

        men

In this post I’m including two short pieces from a eulogy I wrote in honour of my grandmother’s youngest brother (Jimmy Oliver) who died as a prisoner of war in Sandakan, Borneo in 1945.  Jimmy was with the Australian 8^th Division, 2/10^th Field Regiment, sent to Malaya in 1941 to safeguard Singapore should the Japanese attack.  We all know how that turned out.  Anyway, I like to think Jimmy and his mates maintained their Aussie, larrikin and military sense of humour throughout the ordeal.  That’s how I wanted to write it.  I was lucky to be able to do some research at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra one time when I was posted to Navy Office.  I was allowed access to the hand written diaries the Regiment maintained daily from it’s inception in Brisbane, embarkation, soldiering in Malaya and the retreat and final surrender in Singapore.  It was the little snippets that I was interested in – the daily routine; who went on leave with whom; who got punished   Unashamedly, I borrow the rhythm of Masefield’s Fever Chills to try and portray the voice of those poor bastards who embarked on an adventure and got trapped on Singapore.

 

“Tranquil you lie,

      Your knightly virtue proved,

           Your memory hallowed,

                 In the land you loved.”

……..Memorial to 2/10 Field Regiment, Brisbane

1941, Thursday, 20th February         A greaser from the troop ship Queen Mary was found drowned in Singapore harbour.  He had been drinking.

 

E staggered from the Horse Guard Bar

with two of his new found mates,

spat in the gutter and crudely yelled, up the AIF

I gotta get back to the Queen e says,

for Mary’s me home and bed,

so they turned him to port and held up his head

til his eyes stopped lolling about,

then they let him loose and he teetered and rolled

the way that a sailor would,

you’re a greaser they yelled, a greaser from hell,

you’re a bad and evil man,

and the greaser rolled into the night as happy as he could be

 

in the morning they fished a body out

from the harbour of Singapore,

it were Charlie Smith the greaser were he,

and e drank in the Horse Guard Bar.

 

1942, 2nd to 8th February.                   The Japanese subjected the 22^nd Brigade area to an intense artillery barrage.

 

We cowers and our morale is low,

but we’d be alright

if supply could get us more ammo,

them Japs, they

got plenty of ammo, too right,

and they hides and hurls their projies on us

all day and at night,

but there ain’t ammunition enough

for Aussie artillery use.

 

Sarge from ‘is briefing says,

ration the ammo some more,

twelve rounds a day each gun,

to fire at the Japs in Johore,

it’s tough, I know,

but if you’d pull your heads from your backsides,

you’d be better gunners, and find,

it ain’t ammo on what you’s rely,

but there ain’t ammunition enough

for Aussie artillery use.

                              J. O. White

 



 

The Great Wyoming Drought 2012

I wasn’t going to post for a few more weeks, but I’ve been thinking about what I’ve said before, that my writing inspiration often comes from listening to how people talk and the things they are talking about – listening in to conversation.  Except this poem I wrote, The Great Wyoming Drought 2012, didn’t come from listening in to private conversation around my local neighbourhood, it came from listening to a talk-back radio show about the terrible drought happening in Wyoming, America, and the struggle people are going through trying to survive.  I was taken by the slow, resigned country drawl of this one guy who described his property like the moon.  Ironically, the death of Neil Armstrong had occurred only a few days earlier, so he and the moon were also a topic on the radio.  So I want to put this out there as a gesture that maybe we don’t know it, but there are people in the far flung world who care and are concerned for the plight of others.  I don’t know how the Wyoming drought played out, but I do pray that nature was kind.

Also, with the poem, I loosely set the rhythm to Verdelle Smith’s 1966 song, Tar and Cement (which, I believe was the English version of an Italian song by Adriano Celentano, Ill ragazzo della via Gluck).  I not only recite in the shower – I now sing.

 

2012.   Listening to the radio  -  a  rancher describes the plight of cattle in what is now the worst drought in America’s mid west since the conditions of the 1930’s described by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath.  As like Steinbeck’s characters, the man talks in a simple, inevitable way - landscape, the decision to move, trying to hang on to animals that are a part of his family.  And at this time the world hears the news that Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the moon, has died.

The Great Wyoming Drought 2012

 

I’ve got a meadow,

East of the house.

I’ve never been,

Up to the moon.

Armstrong’s the one,

To know about that.

Now he’s not with us,

It must be the moon.

 

And Wyoming’s blown away in dust by now,

There are the meadows,

Nature un-kind,

Where are the people,

Across county lines.

 

Got to keep moving,

Dakota or sell.

Cows are my life.

It’s all that I’ve done.

Don’t know whether,

There’s anything else.

My wife she says maybe,

There’s cows on the moon.

 

And Wyoming’s blown away in dust by now,

Where are the meadows,

Made into moon,

There are the people,

Broken and doomed.

 

Last year any place,

Had cattle out there.

Couldn’t run ten,

To keep them alive.

Wouldn’t say that my cows,

Miss Wyoming right now.

Not as if they had stayed,

On the face of the moon.

 

And Wyoming’s blown away in dust by now,

There are the meadows,

Nature un-kind,

Where are the people,

Crossed county lines.

                                                                                                      J. O. White