Australian soldiers blinded near Villers-Bretonneux 1918 |
The
dépôt d’éclopés is just beyond the town, on the Roman road ….. All day long, and
every day, as many of the éclopés as can get about, and do not mind that the
road see them, and can find space in the shade of the plane tree, sit there,
and look up and down the sunshine and the dust.
Some
of them have one leg, and some of them have one arm. There is one of them who
is packed into a short box on wheels. He sits up straight in the box, and he
can run it about with his hands on the wheels.
There is another in such a little cart, but that one has to lie on his
back, and cannot manage the wheels himself. There is one who lies on a long
stretcher, that they fix on two hurdles.
There
are two who are blind. The two blind men sit, and stare and stare…. The two
blind men at the gate who stare and stare, they cannot see the golden town or
the golden mountains. They cannot see the compassion and the kindness that
there is for them in the faces of all those who look upon them.**
Mackay’s poem “Quinze Vingt,” alludes
to the name of the National Ophthalmology Hospital in Paris; the expression was used in French to refer to a blind person.
Their last sight was the red sight of battle,
and they will see no other thing,
down all their lives.
They sit in darkness,
and are very silent.
They are all young,
and all their lives they must sit still,
in darkness.
At the door of their house is hopelessness.
Hopelessness waits at the door of their house.
Hopelessness is thick and dense.
It has no wet of tears.
One could take hopelessness in one’s hands,
and make a bandage of it
It would be dry and stiff,
and hurt one’s eyes.
They are all young and strong.
They will have long to live,
and to be blind.
—Helen
Mackay
It is not only blindness that the soldiers must endure “down
all their lives,” but the hopelessness that hangs like a coat by the door of
any man who attempts to venture out into a world he cannot see. Outside their homes, the blind, though young
and strong, must endure dependency and pity. Losing their sight, they have
stumbled into lives of paralyzing vulnerability that stretch as far as their
eyes cannot see.
Despite publishing both her journal and a volume of war
poetry (London, One November) Mackay
struggled with the incomprehensibility of the war, explaining, “I try not to
write. The only things worth saying are the things I do not know how to say.Ӡ
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* W.L. Courtney, “Preface,” Journal of Small Things, by Helen
Mackay, Duffield and Company, 1917.
** Helen Mackay, Journal of Small Things, pp. 42-44.
** Helen Mackay, Journal of Small Things, pp. 42-44.
† Mackay, Journal, p. 35.
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ReplyDeletethe characterisation of hopelessness as "dry and stiff" is really striking. However, I live adjacent to a major institution for the blind and am constantly amazed at how positive the blind and partially sighted are. I hope that the young blind soldiers spoken of returned home and had good lives.
ReplyDeleteI do too, Ian.
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