A Presentation
My presentation today is about two well-known Australian poems which are both broadly anti-war in their overall message, but were written in different periods and use different poetic techniques to convey the poet’s emotions and thoughts. ‘The Trains’ by Judith Wright was written during the Second World War when the threat of a Japanese invasion of the north of Australia was seen as a real possibility. ‘Homecoming’ by Bruce Dawe was written in response to Australian involvement in the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 70s.
Each poem’s title gives no hint of its actual subject matter – we have to read the whole poem to understand the title’s significance. However, Dawe’s title is ironic in a way that Wright’s is not. We normally think of a homecoming as a joyous, celebratory event, but that is not the case in this poem.
Wright delays any mention of the war until the last line of her first stanza, when we finally discover that the trains are going north with guns. Before that the trains have a disturbing effect on the landscape and the people: their noise wakes the young and the old up and they pollute nature leaving “a black trail over the still bloom the orchards” (6) - the contrast between “black” and “bloom” made sharper by the alliteration. But Wright also acknowledges their power – she writes of their “splendour” and “a sound like thunder.” As a non-combatant Wright’s poem is ominous in tone – aware of the destruction and devastation that war might bring.
In the second stanza of ‘The Trains’ Wright concentrates on the emotional effect of hearing the trains. She concentrates on the reaction of that “Strange primitive piece of flesh, the heart” (8) which is pierced by the sound of the trains and then “recalls the forgotten tiger” (10). Wright seems to using the irrational ferocity of the tiger here as a symbol for warfare; the tiger is unsettling and disturbing and Wright says that “it leaps awake in its old panic riot” (11) –which suggests the chaos and primitive fear that war brings: the tiger troubles “the children’s sleep” (15) and lays “a reeking trail across our dreams of orchards.” (16) The tiger is menacing and dangerous. Line 13 is especially interesting. Wright says “blood’s red thread still binds us fast in history” – which seems to be a reference to our ties with Great Britain and the Australian readiness to join in both the First and Second World Wars. For many of us our “blood’s red thread” still ties us to the UK.
In Dawes ‘Homecoming’ the dead soldiers are flown home and in lines 10 – 15 their flight home is described in beautiful imagery:
They’re high now higher, over the land
Their shadows are tracing the blue curve of the Pacific
Home, home, home (lines 10 – 13)
It is almost as if the dead find peace high above the earth and far away from the war that has killed them. Their height seems to have removed from earthly troubles and suffering and the repetition of “home”, despite the fact that they are dead, seems comforting. A soon as they have landed, however, we hear the “howl of their homecoming” (16) – which is the howl of the plane’s jet engines but also the howls of grief with which we should greet the news of their deaths. Dogs also howl.
Wright’s final stanza continues to describe the trains suing a metaphor - “iron errands” (17); the iron is the railway tracks on which they travel but also suggests the importance and gravity of their “errands.” The trains are personified in the final lines, hurling out “their wild summoning cry, their animal cry” (19) – as if the war will bring out the worst in humanity – its animality, the tiger within us all. Wright ends the poem by repeating the last line of the first stanza – “the trains go north with guns” (20) – which is now much more ominous in its threatening tone.
Once they are back in Australia Dawe’s corpses are taken to their homes, but there is no triumphal homecoming for these dead soldiers. In small towns “dogs in the frozen sunset/Raise muzzles in mute salute” (19-20): note the way the alliteration – “muzzles/mute” and the internal rhyme “mute/salute” give this line harmony. It seems sad that the only recognition the dead receive is from the dogs – does this reflect the public opposition to our involvement in the Vietnam War? Elsewhere, in the cities, we are told:
Telegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering tree
And the spider grief swings in his bitter geometry (22 – 23)
In line 22 the repetition of ‘t’ sounds creates a nervous atmosphere and the wintering tree reminds us of death; the metaphor of the “spider grief” with his “bitter geometry” shows the insidious nature of the grief that the loved ones of the dead soldiers will feel. Dawe ends his poem on a grim oxymoron: the soldiers are brought home “too late, too early”: too late because they have not escaped death, and too early because they are so young.
Both poems display clear anti-war sentiments – one in anticipation of what lies ahead, the other in the indignity and impersonality of death.
