Former poet laureate drew inspiration from personal inscriptions to write Armistice

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Some chose from the scriptures. Others, from literature and poetry. For families of the first world war’s fallen, finding the words for the inscriptions to adorn the headstones of their loved ones was the final tribute.

As the guns fell silent on 11 November 1918, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) faced the global challenge of ensuring proper burial for 1 million Commonwealth men and women killed. Next-of-kin were invited to add a personal inscription, each limited to just 66 stone-engraved characters.

Now, inspired by the power of those words chosen, former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion has published Armistice, a work commissioned by the CWGC to mark National Poetry Day and the upcoming centenary of the end of the war in 1918.

Motion drew on some of the most moving personal inscriptions found on nearly a quarter of a million of the Commission headstones around the world.

One in particular inspired the poem’s ending – that of Pte Roy Douglas Harvey – whose headstone in Bouchoir New British Cemetery in France bears the words: “My task accomplished and the long day done”.

Harvey, from Glasgow, left Hillhead High school in 1915. He survived the fierce fighting at the Battle of Cambrai with the 5th/6th Royal Scots and was part of the long-awaited British advance that began at the Battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918. He was killed three days later, and found with a copy of his diary, current up to the previous day.

For many, the task of finding the words themselves was too much. Words from Shakespeare, Lord Tennyson and Laurence Binyon feature prominently. Popular examples included: “Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn” by Laurence Binyon; “To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die” by Thomas Campbell; and “After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well” by William Shakespeare.

Motion said of the poem: “When I began writing it, all kinds of other ideas began to emerge, mostly arising from the feelings I share with everyone else about the gigantic scale of suffering endured during the first world war.”

Victoria Wallace, the director general of the CWGC, said Motion’s words “bring a new perspective on the deeply personal inscriptions families chose.

“It seems almost impossible to articulate such loss and love in 66 characters – less than a tweet – to commemorate someone in perpetuity.

“Sir Andrew’s poem shows us how these words written in stone a century ago can come back to life and inspire new creativity to this day, helping to preserve the stories of those who gave their lives during the first world war,” she said.



Armistice by Andrew Motion



Now one thousand five hundred and sixty-four days end

every hour hand of every watch on the face of the earth

snaps to attention a fraction shy of the number eleven.

Their minute hands are still quivering with the effort

to complete the circle and therefore give the signal.

Whenever has machinery fine-tuned or otherwise

been able to refute with such a passionate precision

the idea that the body of time might flow like a river

and reveal it instead as a wide continuous landscape

a block universe where the sudden spotlight moon

introducing her face between cloud-curtains alights

now on one man dead already and now on one dying

while the scattered hinterland suffers its consequences

or delivers its warnings all connected but unavailable.

*

Then the minute hand in a spasm seals its promise

while penny whistles shriek and church bells clamour

while whizzbangs and 59s complete their trajectories

while long-faced telegram boys prop their bicycles

on lampposts and front gates and for the last time

press forward to deliver their dreadful condolences

and lark music like a distillation of daylight itself

which a moment before was neither here nor there

sweetens as it escapes the pulsing throat of the bird

and rain also accustomed to no discernable voice

patters and pounds and performs on barren ground

and a very simple breath of wind entirely fills the air

and everyday clouds performing manifold contortions

saunter off and dissolve in the horizon of their origin.

*

Soon rolling out plans from their corridors and offices

highly efficient angels of the resurrection will descend

to align with names they went by in their earthly lives

nine million or thereabouts bodies and body-fragments.

What is the duration of individual grieving they allow

beyond an agreed upper limit of sixty-six characters.

Think of Private Roy Douglas Harvey who was killed

a reserved and thoughtful schoolboy from Hillhead

leaving behind among other valuable relics a diary

completed up to the evening before his dawn attack

along with a much-thumbed Collins Gem dictionary

from the pages of which rose and will continue rising

these words as time and space maintain their relation

my task accomplished and the long day done.



