Poetry - Mametz Wood Flashcards
Who wrote Mametz wood
Owen Sheers
Mametz wood context
Mametz wood form
the wasted young
gloomy, macabre, dismal, tragic - highlights the futile squandering of young lives
as they tended the land back into itself,
As if farmers are nursing and caring but there was a time it was used for massacre. Earth recovering after war. Real life is about calmness.
A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade,
the relic of a finger
Fragment sacred, saintly, artifact, precious. Remains fragile, metaphor, respectful.
and broken bords egg of a skull,
plosive sound, alliteration as if soul of person is fragile and should be cared for showing life is fragile.
all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white,
have become part of land, stone. Image of china, or near heaven.
where they were told to walk not run.
criticism- poor orders, to avoid chaos
towards the woods and its nesting machine guns
Links nature with battle or unforeseen danger.
And even now the Earth stands sentinel,
Personification, earth is permanent. Contrasts with changeability of humans.
Like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin
Land is being damaged by war. Pushed up for us to realise the evil that happened here.
A broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm
Being together in end, image of comradeship. Describing as work of art, fragments are like broken pieces of mosaic.
Their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre
Funeral dance. Contrasts with tone of poem, makes it more solemn and poignant.
Their socketed heads tilted back at an angle
Eyes wide open, horror
