Poetry and war - other wars

20TH CENTURY POETRY AND WAR
PART 6: Other Wars

CONTENTS
Introduction
  the first world war
  the 1930s
  the second world war
  crimes against humanity
  the nuclear age
  other wars
The US Sailor_Japanese Skull GO
Missing GO
Two Lorries GO
O Come Love
  responsibility
  women's voices

O Come Love These Warring Armies by Dave Cunliffe

Come join in the angels naked march.
Each bearing truly special gifts of
precious fruit, prayer-beads, love-chimes,
wooden dolls & brightly coloured masks.

O come love these savage warring armies
& scatter rose-petals upon their tanks.

Come carrying giant mandal banners,
inscribed with messages of universal love.
Chanting endless mantric poems & softly
beating drums with gentle mudra fingers clasped.

O come love these fearful warring armies
& plant tulips deep inside their guns.

Come ready armed with flowers, bibles, buddhas
& protect each other with kindly thoughts.
Seek out each aggressor to invite him to
smoke with you the magic weed of peace.

O come love these trembling warring armies
& drop upon them tender psychedelic bombs.

INFORMATION

This poem was published at the end of the 1960s.
'fruit, prayer-beads...': associated with the followers of ancient Eastern beliefs, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. Such beliefs were attractive to the 'hippies' of the late 1950s and 1960s
'mandal': a mandala is a pictorial symbol of the universe, consisting of a circle filled with images and designs.
'mantric': a mantra is a series of symbolic sounds or words intoned by someone meditating, to help concentration.
'mudra': ritual hand movements in Hindu religious dancing
'buddhas': images of Buddha, the founder of Buddhism
'smoke with you...': Native Americans traditionally smoked a pipe together to symbolise peace after a conflict had been resolved; the 'magic weed' is marijuana
'psychedelic': a term describing a state of heightened perception, sometimes achieved by using hallucinatory drugs, but also expressed through dazzling and imaginative light-shows and patterns of moving colour. These were popular in the 1960s and early 1970s, and were subtle and inventive - unlike the strobe-lights of today. Here, the poet means to stress not just the visual pleasures of explosions of light and colour, but also the fact that such explosions do not kill or maim.

HISTORY

The swinging sixties: in the west, they began in the late 1950s and ended in the early 1970s. The Cold War and the war in Vietnam were part of life, and brought new words and phrases into the English language: 'body count'; 'cluster bomb'; 'compassion fatigue'; 'confrontation' meaning hostility; CS gas and defoliation, Minuteman and neutron bomb, defoliation, non-proliferation, nuke and gunship; 'surgical strike', and hawks.

But this was also the decade of peace marches and demonstrations, love-ins and sit-downs, peaceniks and flower people, freedom rides, Hare Krishna, kaftans, Afghan coats, love beads, and doves. And the Beatles, of course.

Like Dave Cunliffe, the writer of this poem, many people turned to eastern religions and practices to dissociate themselves from war.

The founder of Buddhism, born over 2,600 years ago in India, was a prince, but at the age of 30 gave up the luxuries of court life and the pleasures of marriage to become a hermit. After years of what the modern world calls 'the simple life', he came to the conclusion that meditation and contemplation were the way to enlightenment. He also preached the pacifist and nonviolent doctrine of 'ahimsa': doing no harm to living creatures.

Love of that all-embracing kind seemed (and still seems) to many people to be the only answer to aggression, confrontation and war. 'Make love not war' could be taken further: 'Make war against war'.

One poet remembered that 10 years back, in 1957, a brother poet 'was challenging poets to react to nuclear warfare, inviting us to resist our rulers. I remember at the time thinking - "well, I am reacting in my poems". Then I thought - "and nobody knows it".' In the 1960s poets of America and Britain stood up, declared their war on war, and were counted.

IDEAS

What some poets said in the 1960s:

Dave Cunliffe: 'I see mantric poetry as a communications network to and from the centre of things, the true poet directing a beautiful underground system of deliverance of all who exist. That is why I feel the poet should be revolutionary, illuminated, an initiate of love, and not involved in power-abuse (politics, exploitation, authority) and War Machine spectres....This is war on all fronts. We are all brothers under the skin. Freedom for all. Walk on.'

Michael Horovitz: 'I thought I would just write what I wanted to without fear, let my imagination go, and scribble magic lines from my real mind...writing which brands "bomb" the most obscene word, as it represents the most obscene impulse in our civilisation. Public feeling is inevitably aroused by work that speaks out loud and clear against cruel, violent, public obscenities very few can really believe in.'

Ted Hughes: 'Poetry is beginning to represent, as an ambassador, something far greater than itself...The idea of global unity is not new, but the absolute necessity of it has only just arrived, like a sudden radical alteration of the sun, and we shall have to adapt or disappear. If the nations are ever to make a working synthesis of their ferocious contradictions, the plan will be created in spirit before it can be formulated or accepted in political fact. And it is in poetry that we can refresh our hope that such a unity is occupying people's imaginations everywhere, since poetry is the voice of spirit and imagination and all that is potential.'

Can we still be convinced that poetry can have this sort of power? Can the poet and the poem speak directly to the reader as thought, not just as experience, and as incitement to positive action, not just as thought? Does present-day poetry need a different language, different outlets, now the great poetry reading sessions of the Beat poets (in halls seating 6,000, or in the open air - in cities, not just in folk festival fields) are over? Are we more influenced by song lyrics, from Joan Baez to Pulp and Radiohead? Is poetry too private?

The message from the 60s poets is still relevant. 'Created in spirit before accepted as political fact': that's exactly the way, and perhaps the only way, that peace can be got and held. Does poetry have a role in this? Can it? Should it? If so....

P E A C E P L E D G E U N I O N 1 Peace Passage London N7 0BT, Britain.
phone +44 (0)20 7424 9444 fax: +44 (0)20 7482 6390 CONTACT US