Epiphany
or “Three Kings Day” is celebrated on January 6th , so it seems only
fitting to share a poem from World War I that ends with the scent of
frankincense. “High Barbary” was written
by J. Howard Stables and published in his small book of verse, The Sorrow that Whistled, in late
1916. Stables enlisted early in the war and
served with the 15th Gurkha Rifles in India, Northeastern Pakistan, and
what was then Mesopotamia and is now modern Iraq.
“High
Barbary” reminds us that the Great War extended far beyond the Western Front:
some of the fiercest fighting occurred at sea, on Turkish beaches in the
Gallipoli Campaign, in the high Alps between Italy and Austria-Hungary, and in
the Middle East. “Barbary” is the
romantic name given to the coast of North Africa, and at a first reading, the
poem appears to romanticize wars of the past, when Barbary pirates attacked
merchant ships, raided cattle (“harried kine”), and pillaged Italian
villages. The choice of the word “pillaged”
itself is subtle and apt, for it has become a euphemism for the violence and
terror that armies inflict on civilians during war, associated mainly with the distant
past.
“High
Barbary” by J. Howard Stables
The distant mountains’ jagged, cruel line
Cuts
the imagination as a blade
Of
dove-grey Damascene. In many a raid
Here
Barbary pirates drave the ships of wine
Back
to Sicilian harbours, harried kine,
Pillaged
Calabrian villages and made
The
land a desolation; here they played
On Glamour's passioned gamut at Lust's sign.
On Glamour's passioned gamut at Lust's sign.
Saracens,
Moors, Phoenicians—all the East,
Franks,
Huns, Walloons, the pilgrims of the Pope,
All,
all are gone. The clouds are trailing
hence;
So
goes to Benediction some proud priest
Sweeping
the ground with broidered golden cope.
--Go,
gather up the fumes of frankincense.
The
poem invites us to look out over an alien landscape, but to see deeper with the
eyes of the imagination that cut “as a blade/Of dove-grey Damascene.” Damascus steel was famous for its use in
swords and knives, but when used as an adjective, “Damascene” refers to a
moment of insight that transforms one’s beliefs and attitudes – an
epiphany.
That
transformation from romanticism to emptiness and loss occurs in the last line
of the first stanza of this short poem:
the ellipsis and stanza break demand that we pause and consider the
consequences of the raids that have made the “land a desolation.” The second stanza continues the shift, as
names of past and present combatants and victims are jumbled together in a
Whitmanesque catalog of war (“Huns” was the derogatory term used for Germans
and “Walloons” are French-speakers of Belgium). Linked by their absence, “All, all are gone.” The words seem almost
prophetic in naming the “Lost Generation” who were killed during The Great War
(an estimated 17 million dead).
The
clouds of death (perhaps also evoking the deadly gas that was used in the war)
are “trailing hence,” while a “proud priest” in his finery seems to
indifferently continue the ritual of blessing. What
are we to do or think? The poem commands
us to do the impossible, as if no rational response to war can be made: we are to “gather up the fumes of
frankincense.” More than anything, the
poem is saturated with images of impermanence, of things that fade and are lost
forever.
Basra Memorial |
Like so many others, Stables did not survive the war but died at age 21 in a battle near Baghdad in early 1917. He has no known burial place, as his body was never found. Wounded and left behind when the British troops withdrew, he is presumed to have died in enemy hands. His name, however, is on the BASRA memorial in modern Iraq. Due to recent wars and tensions in that country, the entire memorial was moved in 1997 from its original location to the middle of what was a major battleground during the first Gulf War.
On a final note of irony, here is what one reviewer wrote about Stables' volume of poetry when it was published in 1916: "The Sorrow that Whistled is an unusual little book, as suits with its name. The writer, whom one takes to be young, revels in Eastern colour and fragrance. He can do something quite good and simple...On the other hand, he can do something extremely bad...Yet there is here a promise, and, not unconnected with it, indications that J.H. Stables is a young soldier. There could be no better school for a young poet who wants to shed the faults of youth than the trenches."
Great scholarship Connie.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for reading and for your generous comment.
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