Remember the blaze of lights

· by · in dVerse, poetry. ·

Later soldier, you will remember
those nights among the blaze of lights
alone you will watch as in your embers
ghosts of women scorch their last delights
Later, soldier in your life’s November
alone at last you long for one more night

of bars and music; someone saying
“One more drink”; but ev’rything is silent
those kindly books you kept laying,
as, soldier, you recall how violence
of your youth is lost in tepid praying.
Your heart is cold but stays compliant

Ball at the Moulin de la Galette
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Today Kim hosts dVerse Poetics where she asks us to write responses to one of three given poems. My choice is to respond to When I’m among a Blaze of Lights by Siegfried Sassoon 1886 (Matfield, Kent) – 1967 (Heytesbury, Wiltshire).

Since Siegried was a soldier I thought about the time of war and how he must have longed for a friendly home alone with good books, and thought about a time in the future when thise becomes true, and how he might have missed that time of comraderie, drinking and women.

October 3, 2023

22 responses to “Remember the blaze of lights”

  1. So much loss with war and youth. This part is my favorite, “One more drink”; but ev’rything is silent. Love the memories specially: Your Life’s November.

  2. This is exquisitely woven, Bjorn! The poem speaks volumes about the emotions and mindset of the late poet Sassoon.. I especially admire; “you recall how violence of your youth is lost in tepid praying. Your heart is cold but stays compliant.” 💙💙

  3. That is the beauty of giving a narrow choice, we get so many different responses! I love your response to the Sassoon poem, Björn, and how, like Sanaa, you directly addressed the soldier poet, and the ‘blaze of lights’ dimmed to embers in your first stanza.

  5. Oh, this is beautiful, Björn. The light dying down… I love that your soldier was allowed to grow old and look back. Though it may be with some regret, he still can – and that is what matters.
    “ghosts of women scorch their last delights” I really like this line – a beautiful response poem.

  6. War changes a man. It did my father and uncle. Silent rooms, sleepless nights long after the war was over. Perhaps, the tepid prayers needed revival. Nice poem.

  7. This is beautiful and due to the subject saddening. Expertly penned, reminds me of several WW1 poems I read lately.

    And it’s fun to see how the same poem could inspire such different responses as yours and mine.

  11. I feel your poem hints not only at the wishing for nights of warmth and women and camaraderie whilst in the cold of the trenches, but how later in life, some people look back on war as a time of having been very “alive”…

  14. I think you’ve captured that sense of how war changes everything, and how longing/grief for what is not war, what went before possesses a soldier’s heart.

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