I love the story you tell here, it is very haunting and as you say it shows
a dark side to "human" nature.  One point that stands out to me is " flicked
muck over torn bits of people".  It sounds like you were all at the crash
throwing dirt over people.  His actions don't stand out because of this
line.  Now it may be true, but I like the line before "We moved, slow as
grazing deer, over the shambles," maybe you could extend this metaphor a
bit, I think of this as a shocked reaction, rather than callous. I believe
your contrast between yourselves and this lad needs to be just a line or two
stronger. I love this line; "...as I stumbled down the bleak perspectives of
his mind;" it shows to me the swirling abyss you saw. I just want more. I
believe poets tend to always be poetic and in your story this line stands
out for me as a stronger visual to extend the moment of your realization.  I
really love the light you throw on this dark nature.  I just want to extend
it to the point where we squirm at the revelation.

His mind had no guiding
principles it seemed to me, no landmarks,
a land without horizons.
Like the fields he hoed.

Thanks!

-----Original Message-----
From: The Pennine Poetry Works [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Arthur Seeley
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2004 5:41 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: New Sub: November 1956 ( Grassie, Gary, Bob)


Thanks for reading and taking time to comment. I am grateful.
I do not like to have to explain what I have tried to do in a poem because
that means that I have failed somewhere in the poem to make my point clear.
But, Bob, you say that the description is clichéd and I have to say , " Of
course it is .That is the point." and when I have repeated it at the end of
the poem it is with certain qualifiers that I hoped were relevant. The rosy
cheeks and quiet smile were a  'mask'. He was not what he seemed. I thought
I knew the man, we had talked lots and I knew about his background on the
farm. We were 19. I had never been more than 10 miles from home in my life
until then. I knew nothing.But I had a monitor or censor internal to me that
allowed me to understand appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, where the
boundaries are, as it were. His handling of body pieces crossed the line for
me. On reflection I think either the enormity of the horror we were stood in
had robbed him of his censor, I hinted at this by the 'circle of stunned
boys' reference, or he never had had lines drawn for him and maybe watching
animals slaughtered in his own backyard had robbed him of any of his
sensibilities, I am not sure. I have as Grassie mentioned written about this
before how it had stayed with me all my life. I have looked at it as a rite
of passage in my coming of age. I wondered at the lad's action all my life.I
have however learned that despite how I may feel about things there is a
remarkable lack of sensitivity in the world and that lad's was and is only a
small part of that. Why do people drive to look at disaster sites?? How do
teenagers burn someone to death and then cut the body up.I read such horrors
everyday and the lad's is a landmark for me.His mind had no guiding
principles it seemed to me, no landmarks, a land without horizons. Like the
fields he hoed. I dunno its where the poem is anyway.
I sometimes run spellchecks Grassie and the American version sometimes makes
me unsure of my own. I have to retain masks and blazing for the reasons
cited to Bob although I shall think on it.
Gary, no he was not retarded in anyway. In those days all the retards were
conscripted into the Army. The Navy got the best. The RAF the next or
volunteers like me.That's what I always understood to be the way of it.
Thanks again to you all Arthur.
>
>
> > November 1956
> >
> > He was a good sort of feller.
> > The soft burr of the Fens was on his tongue,
> > and in the smoke and stale odors of the billet
> > his rosy cheeks shone
> > around a quiet smile and pale blue eyes.
> > He moved away from foul language
> > and brute mouths, without judgment
> > of their struts and boasts and wide wet lips.
> > He read, darned his socks,
> > wrote letters home or snoozed.
> >
> > Before our time there,
> > he had worked his father's fields,
> > hoed the long rows of kale
> > through rods of rain
> > or helped around the yard
> > but brought here now
> > to bend over engines, plugs and pistons
> > and the warm reek of oily steel.
> >
> > Sometimes he'd cock his head
> > and follow with his spanner
> > the flight of swallows
> > over waves of wheat.
> >
> > But we found each other out,
> > he and I,
> > one gray afternoon in November
> > when a Canberra fell from the sky.
> >
> > A circle of silent boys,
> > stunned by enormity,
> > enclosed the huge pit in the mire.
> > We moved, slow as grazing deer, over the shambles,
> > flicked muck over torn bits of people.
> >
> > He moved beyond me,
> > lost in echoes of the yard
> > pealing with the protests of a roped sow;
> > poked with a broken spar a thigh bled pale as pork.
> > It rocked and sucked in the mud, slid to his persuasions.
> >
> > He turned his mask of quiet smile and rosy cheeks
> > and blaze of pale blue eyes upon me
> > as I stumbled down the bleak perspectives of his mind;
> > a land of no horizons.
> >