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Thank you for the translation you did of my poem 'Flight from Arras' into Spanish and for the kind things I'd you said about the poem Luis and thank you for the scholarly review and succinct insights into meanings and style. You're quite correct of course - the key to the whole piece lies in the last two lines: "El aceleralor tiene la respuesta... It was 1962 - I was 27 years old - good-looking - money in my pocket to spend. My chest was ignited with a burning excitement that every man knows (or remembers!) Yes - a flight from responsibility - but perhaps more - perhaps a disregarding preference for life in the face of death! Yes again - an affirmation and recognition of the horror before me, together with an acknowledgement and recognition of the useless waste of young lives - But - an apprehension that if any one of those dead soldiers had raised himself from his green couch of earth in which he was ensconced - he would have urged me (in the rude vernacular of the trenches,) which when translated into polite English would mean... 'To depart for the capital and do what comes naturally! ' When you think about it Luis, assuming that many of those young soldiers joined up in 1914 at the age of say 18, like my uncle Arthur, my mothers brother, who was born in 1896 - they would have been 66 years old in 1962 - two or three years younger than you are now - had they lived! Flight from Arras Where men once swore and struggled in the mud; And cordite stunk the splintered bone, Dumb flesh screamed open to the skies We speed the sun-rimed road munching sandwiches. Laughing our 'Passage Protégé' between the crosses. Every now and again, Every year and again, Every speech and again, OId men remember. But here reality is measured in kilometres, Not historical whimsy. Here Paid mourners, Calculate How much paint to buy for the annual white-wash, Of the blighted 'Cultures Experimentales;' And present bulk orders for flowers, To grateful Market Gardeners Whose greedy soil was watered With imported blood, From 'Accrington and 'Düsseldorf`, Arriving from abroad In convenient air-tight packages, (All that was needed was to break the seal!) Shall we stop and promenade the rows of dead regiments? Shall we pause? Give thanks? Think? Salute? The answer is in the accelerator pedal, Which bends to meet the floor - and Paris! Jud Evans on travelling past the Allied War Cemeteries. Northern France. |
