"The Second Coming" by Wm. Butler Yeats (1919)

Every artist interprets events differently. In the First World War two poets went to battle. They both wrote poems which would stand the test of time. Both poems grew out of the same horrors, and yet both perceived their experiences in such different ways. Here we will examine just two; which have both become emblematic of that conflict; the War to End All Wars.

The first one is by W.B. Yeats. He wrote the classic poem “The Second Coming” while still in France in 1919. The horrors of what he has seen and experienced are compared to the end of time as envisioned in the Bible. It is a stark and dreary assessment of what man hopes for as a result of war; yet he is resigned to a fate which he hopes will bring him rebirth.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

This second poem is much simpler in construction, as well as message. Joyce Kilmer served with the NY Regiment in the same war. He, too came away with a sense of rebirth and a belief in a better world. But the difference in the two poems and their outlooks is astonishing. You all know this one. It’s from 1^st grade.

Trees

I think that I shall never see

a poem lovely as a tree.

 A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed

against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

and lifts her leafy arms to pray;

 A tree that may in summer wear

a nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

who intimately lives with rain.

 Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

My Private War- Liberated Body, Captive Mind by Norman Bussel

This is a combat veteran’s account of his experiences as a gunner flying B-17’s over Europe in WWII. The fact that he is Jewish only adds to it’s allure. Quite simply put, this is one of the most engaging and personable war related memoirs I have ever read.

It is 2 stories- the first being the typical account of a 17 year old from Memphis going off to war and his experiences in bootcamp and flight training and then into the European Theater, flying B-17's out of England.

Short on braggadocio and long on personality, this book hooks you with stories of his friends and wartime buddies. You'll meet "Red" a guy who could find anything, anywhere. And "Old Joe" the German guard who time and again befreinds Mr. Bussel and his fellow captives. From his shootdown over Berlin in 1944 and beyond into captivity you will laugh with mirth and winch in pain as the story unfolds.

Almost lynched by farmers, saved by his enemies, tormented by his captors and liberated by his comrades, this book is fast paced and alive with an energy all it's own. No subject is off limits in this witty memoir of a life turned upside down by the ravages of war and imprisonment beyond the gates of the prison itself.

The second story is one of repressed memories and a struggle against anti-semitism, alcoholism, and Post Traumatic Stress before the phrase was coined.

Stunningly honest in his assessment of his own lifes problems and drawing parallels with the Post Traumatic Stress Disorders of the present day, this book is more than a mere memoir. It is a valuable insight and learning tool into a subject that is still much misunderstood.