dawn bellamy
are separated while taking on their new, and temporary, identities as soldiers.
Sincethe women his personae encounter as part of their military experiences are
predominantly a reminder of difference, their presence works in opposition to the
homoeroticism of First World War poetry. The focus on male flesh and its vulnerab-
ility in wartime enabled First World War soldier-poets, such as Sassoon, vicariously
to acknowledge, via a sense of similarity, their own mortality. In ‘The Dug-Out’,
Sassoon’s persona addresses a sleeping comrade: ‘You are too young to fall asleep for
ever;|And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.’^53 This reminder is not only
of others’ deaths, but also of the possibility of the persona’s own. The glimpses of
female flesh in Lewis’s poetry, on the other hand, emphasize his difference; they
make inescapable his distance from home, from his wife, and perhaps even from
his previous sense of himself, thus compounding his awareness of his own fragility.
Like Lewis, Jarmain alludes to distant women, to those left behind by the soldiers.
Their lives will inevitably be affected by the experience of war, despite their physical
separation from the men who actively ‘go out and sow this burning rose’.^54 Although
in ‘Sleeping on Deck’ and ‘Soldiers’ Prayer’ the lover’s identity is not revealed, this
is not ambiguity designed to conceal, as was common practice for some.^55 Jarmain
sent both poems to his wife in his letters home from the desert, not only imbuing
them with a personal dimension to complement their universality, but also hinting
at the identity of the person to whom he appeals at the end of ‘Sleeping on Deck’:
‘O, my heart has need of you here,|And the hollow of your arm to lay my head.’^56
Ironically, the predominant echo here is of Auden’s ‘Lay your sleeping head, my
love’,^57 a poem which conceals the identity of its addresseebecauseof the text’s
sexuality.^58 In ‘Fear’, Jarmain’s persona urges him to ‘Think of easy and pleasant
things’ in order to overcome his realization that ‘In all this sand a man’s very small
after all.’^59 However, when his thoughts immediately turn to a loved one, he reacts
sharply, ‘No, not of her; not of things too dear—.’ The double caesura conveys
his panic at having thought of something which increases his fear—thoughts of a
loved one intensify the sense of what could be lost—and it is only when he turns to
(^53) Siegfried Sassoon, ‘The Dug-Out’, inCollected Poems 1908–1956(London: Faber, 1984), 94;
italic original.
(^54) Jarmain, ‘The Innocent Shall Suffer’, inPoems, 38.
(^55) See Alan Ross,Blindfold Games(London: Collins Harvill, 1986). Ross discusses his enjoyment,
during the Second World War, of the work of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and expresses his surprise at ́
learning of the writer’s homosexuality.He explains: ‘Until well after the war had finished, ambiguity
in the description of relationships, or more often disguise, was the usual and almost unavoidable
practice’ (pp. 290–1).
(^56) Jarmain, ‘Sleeping on Deck’, inPoems, 19.
(^57) W. H. Auden, ‘Lay your sleeping head, my love’, inThe English Auden: Poems, Essays and
Dramatic Writings 58 , ed. Edward Mendelson (London: Faber, 1977), 207.
See Michael Schmidt,Lives of the Poets(London: Phoenix, 1999), 827: ‘He masked the origins
of his verse....Thus to his main audience he remained a high priest, to his friends an impossible and
wonderful queen.’
(^59) Jarmain, ‘Fear’, inPoems, 29.