JEWISH EAST END CELEBRATION SOCIETY P.O. Box 57317, London E1 3WG [email protected] [Home] [Events] [Gallery] [Publications] [Sidney St exhibition] [Join Jeecs] [Readers help] [Who's who] [Rosenberg] Poems of Isaac Rosenberg Isaac Rosenberg self portrait © Ben Uri, The London Jewish Museum of Art. Letter from Isaac Rosenberg, Private 22311 A Coy. 3rd Platoon 11th Battalion K.O.R.L  B.E.F., to Laurence Binyon, Autumn 1916 ‘I am determined that this war, with all its powers for devastation, shall not master my poetry – that is, if I am lucky enough to come through all right. I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.’ On Receiving News of the War: Cape Town   Snow is a strange white word. No ice or frost Have asked of  bud or bird For Winter’s cost.   Yet ice and frost and snow From earth to sky This Summer land doth know, No man knows why.   In all men’s hearts it is. Some spirit old Hath turned with malign kiss Our lives to mould.   Red fangs have torn His face. God’s blood is shed. He mourns from His lone place His children dead.   O! ancient crimson curse! Corrode, consume. Give back this universe Its pristine bloom.   1914   August 1914   What in our lives is burnt In the fire of this? The heart’s dear granary? The much we shall miss?   Three lives hath one life – Iron, honey, gold. The gold, the honey gone – Left is the hard and cold.   Iron are our lives Molten right through our youth. A burnt space through ripe fields, A fair mouth’s broken tooth.   1916   Marching–as seen from the left file   My eyes catch ruddy necks Sturdily pressed back – All a red-brick moving glint. Like flaming pendulums, hands Swing across the khaki – Mustard-coloured khaki – To the automatic feet.   We husband the ancient glory In these bared necks and hands. Not broke is the forge of Mars; But a subtler brain beats iron To shoe the hoofs of death, (Who paws dynamic air now). Blind fingers loose an iron cloud To rain immortal darkness On strong eyes.   1915–16   Break of Day in the Trenches   The darkness crumbles away. It is the same old Druid Time as ever, Only a live thing leaps my hand, A queer sardonic rat, As I pull the parapet’s poppy To stick behind my ear. Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew Your cosmopolitan sympathies. Now you have touched this English hand You will do the same to a German Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure To cross the sleeping green between. It seems, odd thing, you grin as you pass Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes, Less chanced than you for life, Bonds to the whims of murder, Sprawled in the bowels of the earth, The torn fields of France. What do you see in our eyes At the shrieking iron and flame Hurled through still heavens? What quaver – what heart aghast? Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins Drop, and are ever dropping; But mine in my ear is safe – Just a little white with the dust.   June 1916   Returning, we hear the larks   Sombre the night is. And though we have our lives, we know What sinister threat lurks there.   Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know This poison-blasted track opens on our camp – On a little safe sleep. But hark! joy – joy – strange joy. Lo! heights of night ringing with unseen larks. Music showering our upturned list’ning faces.   Death could drop from the dark As easily as song – But song only dropped, Like a blind man’s dreams on the sand By dangerous tides, Like a girl’s dark hair for she dreams no ruin lies there, Or her kisses where a serpent hides.   1917 (Poems following the versions in 21st-century Oxford Authors: Isaac Rosenberg, edited by Dr Vivien Noakes, OUP 2008)