Arctic Convoy There were three Archies – Archibalds – in my family a century ago: you were the unlucky one, a little bobble of flesh on the edge of your ear – a genetic glitch shared only by my own mother in our entire known Welsh family. Your fate was to be lost on the Arctic convoys, listed as ‘MISSING’ and, of course, never found – or looked for – like all who entered that unforgiving, sub-zero, fish-freezing sea. Forgotten lives, crushed in a hinge of history, creaking with the sinking ship, going down, down, down, the steel sucked to the seabed in seconds sometimes, minutes at most. The same fate for half of the men on the convoy crews – swallowed whole, alive or dead, by that hard Arctic water a merciless sea made of sharks of ice, the mouth always open. Dead in minutes in those corpse-cold waters, like The Titanic thirty years before, but no lifeboats at all on the Arctic convoys. No survivors. There couldn’t be – these ships were more important than men; they didn’t stop, turn round to rescue the torpedoed doomed in the ice floes, but carried on, protecting the convoy road from Britain to Russia. To feed the Soviets and keep them alive fighting Nazi Germany – that was their task, with eighty-five vessels lost and every man on them too, who went down with their ships, all now sleep-deep, a mile below. You are there in the small photograph as a smaller child, smartly dressed, at my grandparents’ church marriage at Coity, Bridgend in 1908, destined to be dead in your thirties, which, in that boy-biting war, was rather late. Your flesh now decks the wrecks with all the others, frozen solid, faces under the foam, as white as the bellies of dead fish, eternally considering the mist drifting over that black yawning water. Sometimes I think I can hear you laughing, lost in the devouring depths, because your name, obsolete for so long, is now in fashion for babies again, but you are just another skull still grinning there, under the ice-white, whale-blue, unchangeable crushing weight of it all.
On Gower We sat on that cracked skull of ancient rock, one of many sharp shards of old volcanic stone which scar the wind-thinned hilltop grass on Gower. This is our favourite place of all; one thing we have in common – the love of this landscape lapping at our inner skin like the whale-waved sea. We watch the crabs scratch italic in the sand at Caswell, where you want your ashes scattered amongst the dancing dabs, and the secret songs of seals. We laugh as we remember making naked in the sand dunes, carved into each other by the darkness, alive with beating blood, like the first animals on earth. Then, unremembering, we open another bottle of cheap wine and, waiting for the drunken dark, we watch the setting sun dissolve into the sea like an aspirin.
Advice to and From a Hospice Resident Grasp life with a fierce joy In all its astonishing loveliness. Breathe in the icy bite of the frosty morning air; Feel the warmth of the wintry sun upon your freezing cheek. Blink at the glittering light on the shimmering water; Listen to the wind sing its busy song inside the sky. Touch this world of wonder with your thoughts and senses, And let it enter you with a rush of blood to the head. For you are alive – not yet dead. Just try to remember the best bits of living: Laughter, kindness, courage. Love. It is enough.
Song for the Somme Written in memory of members of the 38th (Welsh) Division killed at Mametz Wood in northern France, July 1916 Just before dawn, blue in the moonlight, standing together alone Wait for the sign, crouch in the line, sanity cut to the bone. We stood in the trench, and breathed in the stench, the dirt and the filth and the mud, And the rats had their fill, and went in for the kill, as they gnawed through the death and the blood. And so we’ll all die together for king and country now, Oh yes we’ll all die together – in the morning. So we sat in the stink, and dreamt of a drink, watched corpses rot through the barbed wire, And the smoke blocked the sun, and the fighting’s begun, as we march into murder and fire. And it felt like a cull, as shrapnel split skull, and bullets brought death to the line, Climbed over the top, and the noise wouldn’t stop, and we knew this would be the last time. And so we’ll all die together for king and country now Oh yes we’ll all die together – somehow. So we cuddled with our guns, and wrote to our mums, And went over the top with a one, two, three; Straight into the flak, as we launched the attack, We’ll smile until we’re dying. Yes I’ve got my gun, to murder the Hun, and he’s got the same aimed at me, And the blue sky’s a bomb, dropping death on The Somme, and pretty soon it will get me. And so we’ll all die together for king and country now Oh yes we’ll all die together – in the morning. And we won’t remember, when this war is over, It’s over the top with a one, two, three; Straight into the flak – we’re not coming back, We’re smiling as we’re dying. Just before dawn, born of the one light, standing together alone Wait for the sign, crouch in the line, sanity cut to the bone. The poets they write, of the wrongs they will right, and like soldiers we talk when we can Of our pain and our joys, and our lifetimes as boys, and the death that will make me a man. And so we’ll all die together for king and country now, Oh yes we’ll all die together – in the morning. And so we’ll all die together for king and country now Oh yes we’ll all die together – somehow.
All poems ©️ Jem Vanston. You can listen to Song for the Somme here. If you’d like your poetry to be featured on a Sunday, in any or many languages, drop Your Editrix a line.
