When the bells rang out on the eleventh hour on November 11th, 1918 for the Armistice, the parents of Wilfred Owen were delivered the telegram; their son had been killed in action on the 4th of November, seven days prior. He was twenty-five years old. Among the effects found on his dead body, was the piece 'Strange Meeting'. which encapsulates the whole horror in its almost conversational tone.
The Irony of Poetic Truth
This poem in particular, uses an almost conversational tone in its encapsulating of the magnitude of horror in boys killing boys. The second verse, much longer than the beginning and end is well worth the reading aloud. It sings in a lyrical rhythm, yet the words themselves speak of what was and what had been so treasured in the life that seems now so far away. In tone, the underlying waste of belief and sacrifice in treachery of political wars, but in the 'bad luck really' acceptance of this is the way of it, regardless of the heroic commentaries of valor. It is in the final stanza where Owen delivering the force of the whole poem, does not concede to the rhetoric, nor to the falsities of propaganda, surrounding The Great War, for it was to be, the war to end all wars.
Strange Meeting
By Wilfred Owen
It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined,
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot—wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now . . ."
Though Owens’s work is frequently read and understood, not necessarily as poets are studied, but rather as this poet brought forth by the powers of words, the true reality of the sickening slaughter of war's death; mankind has learned little.
The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jon Stallworthy, W.W. Norton & Company, 1986 ISBN 0-393-30385-3
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