Thanks for posting this, David. You're right. Michael Longley is very much a first world war poet, as well as being a poet of the Troubles

Comment is about Acclaimed Northern Irish poet Michael Longley dies aged 85 (article)

Original item by Greg Freeman

Michael Longley was / is a wonderful poet. His reflections on Ireland speak with pure authenticity.

I first became aware of him when I was living in Northern Ireland and trying to get my head around the place. In my experience artists of all kinds are a good place to start. I read Heaney, Yeats, Muldoon...then I happened across Longley and wondered why it had taken me so long to find him.

My favourite poem of his is "Wounds" which speaks of generational trauma and the futility of war. It shook me when I read it, as it was at a time of much tit for tat murder in the sectarian slaughter that was and is almost dismissively referred to as "The troubles"

Wounds (1973)

Here are two pictures from my father’s head —
I have kept them like secrets until now:
First, the Ulster Division at the Somme
Going over the top with ‘Fuck the Pope!’
‘No Surrender!’: a boy about to die,
Screaming ‘Give ’em one for the Shankill!’
‘Wilder than Gurkhas’ were my father’s words
Of admiration and bewilderment.
Next comes the London-Scottish padre
Resettling kilts with his swagger-stick,
With a stylish backhand and a prayer.
Over a landscape of dead buttocks
My father followed him for fifty years.
At last, a belated casualty,
He said — lead traces flaring till they hurt —
‘I am dying for King and Country, slowly.’
I touched his hand, his thin head I touched.

Now, with military honours of a kind,
With his badges, his medals like rainbows,
His spinning compass, I bury beside him
Three teenage soldiers, bellies full of
Bullets and Irish beer, their flies undone.
A packet of Woodbines I throw in,
A lucifer, the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Paralysed as heavy guns put out
The night-light in a nursery for ever;
Also a bus-conductor’s uniform —
He collapsed beside his carpet-slippers
Without a murmur, shot through the head
By a shivering boy who wandered in
Before they could turn the television down
Or tidy away the supper dishes.
To the children, to a bewildered wife,
I think ‘Sorry Missus’ was what he said.

Poem © Michael Longley 1973. Source: An Exploded View by Michael Longley.

Comment is about Acclaimed Northern Irish poet Michael Longley dies aged 85 (article)

Original item by Greg Freeman