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16 Nov 09 - 09:10 AM (#2766953) Subject: Lyr Req: OZ poet Jack Lindsay: Mass4 Int Brigade From: GeoffLawes Could someone please let me have the words to the poem by Australian poet Jack Lindsay, 'Requiem Mass for a Fallen International Brigader' In another Mudcat thread requesting lyrics for ' Jack Atky and All' about Jack Atkinson,a Hull man who died in the Battle of Jarama, brezhynsky says that Jack Atkinson is mentioned in the Lindsay poem.I would appreciate it if someone could post up the words to the poem for me.And so too, I think,would Jack Atkinson's relatives who don't yet know about this poem. Regards, Geoff |
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16 Nov 09 - 10:18 AM (#2766991) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: OZ poet Jack Lindsay: Mass4 Int Briga From: Sandra in Sydney it's on p.193 of The Cambridge Companion to War Writing, edited by Kate McLoughlin, published Aug 2009. Hardback ISBN-13: 9780521895682. Paperback ISBN-13: 9780521720045 The book is only held by 2 Australian libraries - Uni NSW & Sydney Uni. Libraries Australia , the union catalogue of holdings of all Australian libraries gives 1081 references for "Jack Lindsay" & no references to 'Requiem Mass for a Fallen International Brigader' Wikipedia on Jack Lindsay (eldest son of Norman Lindsay) |
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16 Nov 09 - 11:43 AM (#2767034) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: OZ poet Jack Lindsay: Mass4 Int Brigade From: GeoffLawes Thank you Sandra. The Wikipedia entry to which you gave us the link was interesting because it gives a geographical link, though not a chronlogical link between Jack Lindsay, the writer of the poem and Jack Atkinson the man referred to in the poem. Lindsay was born and raised in Brisbane, leaving in 1926 while Jack Atkinson went there from Hull, UK, as a 14 year old in about 1929. I guess that it was this connection which, for Lindsay, picked Jack Atkinson out from the 130 or so other British Battalion men killed at Jarama. If anyone knows more about this it would be great to find out. If anyone has The Cambridge Companion to War Writing, edited by Kate McLoughlin, I would be very pleased if you could post the poem up here. Regards, Geoff |
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25 Nov 09 - 12:17 PM (#2773481) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: OZ poet Jack Lindsay: Mass4 Int Brigade From: GUEST,brezhnev Geoff, here´s the stanza about Jack Atkinson from the Requiem. Do you want me to scan the rest of the poem for you? Where now is he that came early to fighting? In Sydney, while gulls screamed around Pinchgut he learned resisting evictions, that the people were all evicted from the world of their making and stamped into hovels of hardship. He came back, a stowaway, to Edinburgh – but cried: 'I stand in the open bows of purpose journeying to Spain where the people claim their birthright.' Where is Jack Atkinson of Hull? |
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12 Dec 09 - 01:11 PM (#2786975) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: OZ poet Jack Lindsay: Mass4 Int Brigade From: GeoffLawes Hi brezhnev, I have only just found your last post in the archive. Thank you very much I would really appreciate it if you could scan the whole poem in for me. If I interpret the poem correctly it confirms that Jack Atkinson was involved in eviction resistance in Sydney - but the information that he returned to Britain as a stowaway to Edinburgh is completely new. Thank you so much. Geoff |
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21 Feb 20 - 12:44 AM (#4035306) Subject: Lyr Add: REQUIEM MASS FOR THE ENGLISHMAN FALLEN... From: cnd As printed in The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse, Ed. Valentine Cunningham, pp. 179-183. Requiem Mass for the Englishman fallen in the International Brigade Call out the roll call of the dead, that we, the living may answer, under the arch of peace assembled where the lark's cry is the only shrapnel, a dew of song, a sky wreath laid on earth out of the blue silence of teeming light in this spring-hour of truce prefiguring the final triumph, call upon them proudly, the men whose bones now lie in the earth of freedom. Stand out on the crag of the morning to sound reveille. Hark to the peal of silence, remembering. This moment of honour claps our hearts with the future, and already we taste, like wedlock in a first kiss, the hour when the last barricade of estrangement falls and the roaring night is warmly beaconed with pledges of kinship, the peoples world-united, world without end, the dawn on the earth of freedom. Ask of the eagle that yelped overheard where in the blaze of death the Spanish workers blocked the Guadarrama passes with their dead. Eagle of Spain, from your eyrie of the skies answer, Where are they now, the young and the brave? The brotherly dead pour out of the bugle-call. Where are the faces we seek, the English faces? Let the living answer the roll-call of the dead. Where now is he, gay as the heart of spring rich with the world's adventure, wandering from where the moon hands in a crooked willow of Samara to where congested London clots with a toxin England's aorta vein? In strength of pity, as he had lived, he died, and the bullets whined through boughs of winter over his broken face. Where is Ralph Fox of Yorkshire? Where now is he, the eager lad who beheld England's fate whitening under Huesca's moon? Where the shells splash enormous flowers of destruction, flame-gawds of madness, fountain-plumes of terror, there must freedom walk or the earth is surrendered to these her ravishers, so I shall walk with freedom and after the agony you will pluck fruits in the garden. Where is John Cornford of Cambridge? Where now is he, a voice among many voices, who said: 'In poverty's jail are bolted the guiltless, the thieves lock up their victims.' His voice protested. Sentenced, he saw, through a stone wall, the truth. Clearer that wall of privation than any arguments. He struck his hand on the stone and swore he would break it he took a rifle and smashed through that wall in Spain. Where is Wilf Jobling of Chopwell? Where now is he, who amid the grinding of plates in the tramp steamer's fo'c'stle, listened. The waters streamed through the hawsepipe, and the ship dipped shuddering. He learned who was racketing, who had rigged orders to gain the world's insurance money while drowning the crew. Bearing an ambulance stretcher among the trenches of danger, I have found my way home, he answered, before Madrid. Where is Davidovitch of Bethnal Green? Where now is he that came early to fighting? In Sydney, while gulls screamed around Pinchgut, he learned resisting evictions, that the people were all evicted from the world of their making and stamped into hovels of hardship. He came back, a stowaway, to Edinburgh-- but cried: 'I stand in the open bows of purpose journeying to Spain where the people claim their birthright.' Where is Jack Atkinson of Hull? Over the faint blue streak of sierras, the bare scarps heaving ribbed and flattening-vague where noon scoops out the shadows from the ravines rasped the Caproni planes. Is this a strange country, you Scotsman? No. I have recognised it. See, the village children clench their firsts in welcome. For we are they in whom love becomes justice. Where is James Wark of Airdrie? Where now is he, that leader of London busmen, in a ragged olive-groves on the Jarama sector, a company commander? Wiping grit from his eye, he laughed, and swung his machine-gun at the ledge of toppling fascists, then to the higher ground ordered his men. The fiery rocks split flailing and the barrage shogged battering up the hill. Where is Bill Briskey of Dalston? Where now is he, that comrade quick with laughter? Behind the sandbags he crawled with bleeding knees, sweat blurred the pounding distance, still he fired, the claws of heat were fastened in his arm that scraped along the stone. A wallowing roar fire-drenched, billowed. As he was borne away, dying, he sang the International. Where is Alan Craig of Maryhill? Tanks lurched up over the rise, and men from their hands and knees flung forward on the gust of attack staggering head-down. Our rifle fire's long crackle was drowned, the booming racked and rocked the earth, but wavering the crumpled line stumble on the grass-tussocks, clumsily pitching. Out of touch we rushed, the tanks heeled crunching but where is he that led us? Where is Robert Symes of Hampshire? Where now is he, that tramping on means-test marches, knew that the road he had taken against oppression led to the front in Spain? For he was marching in country lined with harlot-hoardings of menace, England seared into slums by the poison-bombs of greed. That road of anger and love must lead to Spain, the shouts in Trafalgar Square to No Pasaran. Where is Tommy Dolan of Sunderland? Where now is he that sold the 'Daily Worker'? The poster waved from his hand was a red flag hoisted on the barricades of choice. I have seen the world dividing at the voice of truth, so there is nothing strange in the clang of this war. I have seen its first skirmishes when the police drew batons and charged my friends, and so I shall go to Spain. Where is Jock Tadden of Dundee? This war has roots everywhere, in the soil of squalor. He watched on the tarnished slates the glistening moon, a milky drip of light mocking the mouth of hunger, a promise of cleansing beauty, a pennon of freedom. and midnight, yawning, creaked with the ghosts of old pain, till resolution regathered like the moonlight flowing in through the cast iron bars at the end of the bed. Where is T. J. Carter of West Hartlepool As summer is plighted in the little red comes of larch, so will the fullness of freedom unfold from these, our comrades, in its hour. For unless the onset of spring was here in the spears of the daffodil and eyes of stickleback emerald in water-darkness, no summer breath would gloss then plum ruffle the hill's gold harvestfur. And so we cry: Where is Syd Avner of Stoke Newington? These men as types of the English dead in Spain we summon here in the nested hush of the Spring, rising amid grey clouds of travellers-joy, with marshgold smouldering in the hollows of sunset, and sweetness plaited in the hazel catkins. Here in this green hawthorn moment of England, we conjour them, brief as an azure drift of windflowers and lasting as the earth of unity. 1938 - Jack Linsay |
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21 Feb 20 - 10:44 AM (#4035392) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mass for a Fallen International Brigader From: GeoffLawes Thank you cnd, you might like to know that this will be read out as part of a memorial ceremony for Jack being held in Hull tonight ( the 83rd annivesary of Jack's death at Jarama). ps a typo in the above Jack Lindsay not Jack Linsay |
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24 Feb 20 - 04:48 AM (#4035802) Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mass for a Fallen International Brigader From: GeoffLawes Commemoration at the No Pasarán memorial for Jack Atkinson. |