[Alessio Boni]

New Version............................... (I decided to actually get rid of S1, maybe Julie was right, the gift is more than enough to suggest alcohol)

The major yelled, ‘My loyal boys!
This gift is from the king,
And he requests that all his toys
Get ripe enough to sing!’

I too partook in all the laughs
And revels of that night,
But when the major blew his blast
I knew ‘twas time to fight!

We drunken slobs all took our place,
With fastened bayonets,
Like bulls amidst our final race,
We staggered on the steps,

Then, all at once, we charged the foe,
When out the trench we jumped.
One hundred sacks were hammered.
O! I saw them form a bunch.

With grievous wounds and severed limbs,
With muscle fibres torn,
With bones protruding out our skin,
We fought until the morn.

And as my unit fled in time
To find retreat, we piped,
‘Tonight they gave us beer and wine
So all by me is right!’

And when the sun had risen above
The empty field of gore,
We gathered round, and sang with love,
‘Today they’ll give us more!’



Original Version.........................


That night they gave us beer and wine
In twenty wooden barrels,
I needn’t say the rousing time,
And how the men had carolled!

The major yelled, ‘My loyal boys!
This gift is from the king,
And he requests that all his toys
Get ripe enough to sing!’

So all the drinks were given out
To man’s self-serving hand,
The soldiers drank and danced about,
Whilst mirth had seized the land.

I too partook in all the laughs
And revels of that night,
But when the major blew his blast
I knew ‘twas time to fight!

Us drunken slobs had took our place,
With fastened bayonets,
Like bulls amidst our final race,
We staggered on the steps,

Then all, at once, we charged the foe,
When out the trench we jumped.
One hundred sacks were hammered.
O! I saw them form a bunch.

With grievous wounds and severed limbs,
With muscle fibres torn,
With bones protruding out our skin,
We fought until the morn.

And as my unit fled in time
To find retreat, we piped,
‘Tonight they gave us beer and wine
So all by me is right!’

And when the sun had rose above
The empty field of gore,
We gathered round, and sang with love,
‘Today they’ll give us more!’

[Yves S L]

Do you have nothing within your own life experiences to write about?

[Alessio Boni]

What brought you to ask me this?

Also, I do, but not all my poems are on my life.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Alessio—

A rollicking soldier’s ballad—fun to read! The moral seems to be that alcohol can be used to encourage men to risk life and limb when mere honor and patriotism are not enough.

A couple of grammatical nits:

1. In English, the perfect tenses require the past participle (third principal part). In S5L1 you need to replace “took” with “taken.” Since this throws your meter off, you could just use the simple past: We drunken slobs all took our place. (Note “Us” > “We”).
Similarly in S9L1 you need to change “rose” to “risen.” For some reason this doesn’t seem to hurt the meter.

2. In S6L2 and S7L3 you need to add “of” after “out:”
When out of the trench we jumped. (or When from the trench we jumped.)
With bones protruding out of our skin. (or With bones protruding from our skin.)

Hope this is helpful.

Glenn

[Alessio Boni]

Hi Glenn,

I'm very glad you liked it.

I didn't really intend to put a moral for this poem, more so I wanted to depict a scene I often read about on my WWI books on the Isonzo front, where Austrians would regularly give alcohol to their Hungarian troops (considered more aggressive when drunk) to then fight the Italians in a such a state. Although I was tempted at first to make it more macabre, the theme for some reason connected better to me as a ballad, exactly in the way you described it!

I also thank you for the corrections so I think I'll apply them tomorrow morning, if you don't mind of course since they are your words.

You helped a lot!

Cheers,

Alessio.

P.S

Your interpretation of the moral however isn't wrong, I can perfectly see the poem celebrating such an instance, maybe I should make it less triumphant?

[Julie Steiner]

Alessio,

I needn’t say the rousing time,
And how the men had carolled!

Then don't.

I suggest cutting S1. It's unnecessary for understanding what happened, and the wrenched rhyme will make some readers trip on the threshold on their way into the poem.

Some of the later stanzas could also be cut. Brevity would make the whole poem more effective.

I also suggest not fixing the unorthodox grammar. The narrator doesn't seem like the sort of person who would be fussy about the proper cases of pronouns, etc.

Cheers,
Julie

[Alessio Boni]

Hi Julie,

Thanks for the suggestion, but I feel that if I cut away S1 then the repeated verse of "Beer and Wine" would be gone, and S8 would not have that strength (I think I can call it strength?) of repeating the absurdity of this horrifying war tactic.

Although I think I will be cutting S3 as it just adds useless detail to the supposed fun of the soldiers prior to battle, and I feel the more abrupt and fast the order of fighting comes from the major, the more shocking it is.

Thank you!

For Glenn and Julie,

For the corrections suggested by Glenn, I think I'll apply some of them, but now that I think about it, as Julie pointed out, the imperfect grammar of this poem could also be related to the imperfect soul, (the Hungarian soldier narrator) and his battlefield type of poem, which would be largely poco curato.

At the same time though I'm conflicted because I would like my poem to be fully correct as per Glenn's suggestions.

I'm going to post the revised version shortly.

Cheers,

Alessio.