These Trenches

These trenches are not dug in the chalk soil of the old hills
not pocked with mortar shells, not strafed by machine guns
not burned by flamethrowers, not filled with rainwater and rot

Here we do not climb ladders to lurch into barbed wire
watching the sturdy farmers, miners, factory workers
torn limb from limb or eroded by shrouding yellow fog

These trenches are excavated in our minds, these dugouts
reinforced with sandbags and creosoted timbers reek
in our hearts; words the howitzers that our lives rock.

We soldier on, our feet in churning mud unyielding, holding
close the bolt-action of our fears, unwilling to let go,
doing or dying for king and country without final trust

but not knowing what else to do we follow orders
and with the spade and pick of the imagination carve
a new salient to guard our exposed flank's thrust.

O God in Heaven who succored the dying in that great war
when the tank was new and the aeroplane pity us
in these trenches of hopelessness where we slogging rust.

29.xi.2007

Author's commentary:

This poem was written for a friend who often uses imagery of war in her poems about her marriage. Both of us have suffered from abuse within our relationships -- suffered both as abused and abuser, I think, although perhaps I should not speak for her. She wrote to me about her recommitment to her marriage, and this was linked with the ecclesiastical season of Advent. She spoke of the first Sunday in Advent as being New Year's Day; for me the Christian New Year would be either Christmas (which of course Advent anticipates) or Easter, but I will not argue the point too much.

In one evening, I wrote a series of poems considering the basic theme of expectation of the coming Good; These Trenches expresses the fundamental difficulty we face as humans: in our minds and hearts, we are at war -- at war with each other, at war with nature, at war with ourselves.

Structurally, the poem evolved at a point when I was playing with a technique suggested to me by Joanne Servansky. She and I were toying with various sorts of codes, and she began to write poems in which she wrote a kind of standard ABAB CDCD EFEF rhyme scheme, but then divided the stanzas ABA BCD CDE FEF, for example. I found this intriguing, and I began to construct poems which were basically four-lines-to-a-stanza but then divided into 3-2-3-2 patterns or even more abstracted combinations, the goal being to set up novel interactions. At the same time I was also working at the back of my mind to break free from end-stopping my lines, incorporating more enjambment not only from line to line but from stanza to stanza. (In large part, this last has been a goal since I attended a workshop with Li-Young Lee a few years ago; Mr Lee suggested to me that my poems were like a series of closed rooms because of the end-stopping: with enjambment, it would be as though doors or windows were opened in the lines and stanzas inviting the listener or reader to move on to the next line, the next stanza.)

This poem does not directly incorporate the above technique, but, as I note, was composed at the same point in my thinking. I did not feel that rhyme would be appropriate to the subject, but I used assonance to link the stanzas into two groups.

The first group (rot/fog/rock) identifies the real location of the war: it is not here, not here, not here (first stanza), even though the horror is very immediate and everyday (second stanza): the place of the conflict is our minds, our hearts, our words (third stanza). The second group (trust/thrust/rust: which of course is rhymed, as it happens, but my intent was not primarily to rhyme -- it's okay that it worked out this way, and I suppose some critique may think it is some kind of genius. That's okay, too) tells what we are doing (fourth stanza) and why (fifth stanza), and begs for help (sixth stanza). I suppose we could say that the rhyme -- rather than assonance -- here establishes a closer link between the conceptual grouping, which without that link is really more tenuous.

In the first stanza, the five-times repeated "not" is set against the clear, if often violent, imagery. I am reminded of a lesson in childrearing: when trying to modify behavior, tell a child what you do want her or him to do, not what you don't, because the word "not" is ignored. So, if you say "do not throw yoghurt on the rug" you can be certain that in moments yoghurt will be spilled, whereas if you say, "keep your yoghurt in the bowl", the child will be careful to do so. Thus the theory, at any rate. I find in this stanza, though, that the principle stands, fairly well: even if these trenches are not, not, not, not, not, it is the digging, the pocking, the strafing, the burning, and the filling that I imagine as I read this stanza.