View at the top of the Tak-i-Girrieh pass on road from Mesopotamia to Persia © IWM (Art.IWM ART 2343) |
The Great War
was the first world war, a war that took many far from their homes and sent
them to places distant and unfamiliar. In
two short poems, J. Griffyth Fairfax, a British soldier born in Australia,
educated at Oxford, befriended by Ezra Pound, and serving with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force,
captures scenes from the forgotten front in the Middle East.
© IWM (Art.IWM PST 10782) |
Noon
The clouds are
gathered and the wind blows,
wet with tears
The river is
ruffled grey,
And swept in a
curve like a sinister steel blade
Tapering slimly
away.
In the hand of
Destiny this sword severs our years,
Sunders the
light and shade.
—Madhij
Dusk
A long lean
cloud, like a greyhound,
Chases a fading
sun;
The plain turns
black, and the wave turns gold,
Then dark, and
the day is done,
And the bats
swing out in circles,
And the stars
wake, one by one.
Fallujah ca. 1914 Caravanserai |
—Falluja.
Still today, clouds
gather, winds blow, darkness falls – and the battle for oil, land, and power
rages on.
Fairfax’s poems
were published in Mesopotamia: Sonnets and Lyrics at Home and Abroad, 1914-1919 and dedicated to Brigadier-General E.
Dickson and Captain R.S. Aitchison: “These verses are
affectionately inscribed in memory of some peculiar and many pleasurable
adventures shared while serving with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force
1917-1919.”
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