PACIFISM IN
STEPHEN GILL’S POETRY
Dr. Brahma Dutta
Sharma
In his poetry Stephen Gill appears as a pacifist and a champion of peace and harmony. In a number
of his poems, such as ‘Talking of
Peace’, ‘Light of Truth’, ‘Divided Humanity’, ‘About War’, ‘The Gulf Crisis on
TV’, ‘A Familiar Scene’, ‘If There Be a Third World war’, ‘Prayer for the
Coming Years’, and ‘To Be’ he describes
wars as occurrences causing destruction and peace and harmony as the bringers
of happiness, growth and construction. He explicitly says that a war is an
undesirable occurrence. For example, in his poem ’Prayer for the Coming Years’ he says that he
wishes to weed out war:
Strengthen me with thy Manna
to weed out
the war
the misery
and the hard days of the past
and to help
good to emerge
in the coming years. (Divergent Shades, 9)
The poet’s wishes to
have a future which is free from wars, and misery. He regards warfare as
an undesirable phenomenon. He associates peace with construction and wars with
destruction. For instance, in his poem ‘Hounds of War’ he writes:
When
the hounds of war
ravage
the luxuriant pastures of prosperity
melodies of the dove slumber
under the foliage of the rainbow
of discontent. (Shrine
56)
He is asserting in this poem that wars
bring harmony to its end, kill melodies and prevent people from realizing their
dreams. When he says: The dove pleads /
that the dance of the hounds/ be stopped/ to let her pacifying carol /fortify
human muscles/ to build more Taj Mahals
and pyramids of justice. (Shrine 56), he suggests that human muscles
can make justice have its sway only when there is peace.
In his poem ‘War Fever’ Gill lists some of the losses that war
causes to humans and their surroundings:
War fever
poisons the air of surroundings
disturbs the calm of sea
crumbles human relations
kills the appetite of the soul
weakens the liver of love,
turning everything upside down. (Shrine
49)
According to Stephen Gill, a war turns
everything upside down because it pollutes the air of the
surroundings, disturbs the calm of seas, weakens the feelings of love,
spiritualism and friendship.
Gill repeatedly states in his poems
that war causes mass killings. For instance, in his poem ‘Trilliums’ he defines
war as an act of slaughtering: War: / to buy blossom of a mother/ for slaughtering of
another. (Songs for Harmony 56). In his
poem ‘About War” he
writes: War creates more widows/ renders
infants fatherless/ sets homes in darkness/ and loses human affection (Songs for Harmony- 22).
He draws his readers’ attention to the
other harms that wars cause. He
elaborates them in the same poem:
War pollutes the air
making life very hard
it produces untold terrors
and stocks tearing tensions. (Songs for Harmony 22)
If one is sensitive to human misery one
must feel pity for a woman who has become a widow whether she belongs to our
country or to that of our enemy. Likewise, a boy who has lost his father has
been deprived of the care one gets from one’s father, with the result that he
has been rendered pathetic. A human child needs care for a long time and unless
proper care, including education, is made available to him, he remains deprived
of an opportunity to develop his talents properly. When the
poet says: “War pollutes the air” (see supra), he draws the readers’
attention to another problem. The
air we breathe in is highly polluted and it needs efforts to control the level
of pollution. Since wars increase pollution, they should not be allowed to
occur. The fourth problem to which the poet draws our attention is that wars
make life hard as it causes a lot of destruction and deprives people of what
they have created to make life less hard. Since it is in the interest of the
survival of human race, life should be made as easy as possible. What makes
life hard must be looked upon with askance. When the poet says that a war
“produces untold terrors” (see supra), he is drawing attention to the
fact that during the days of war nothing is safe and any city, any man and any building may
be targeted any time. It is still fresh in the memory of mankind that during
the Second World War,
In a number of his poems Gill gives
pen-pictures of the victims of fighting and brings into focus the damages which
the wars cause. For example, his poem ‘The Gulf Crisis on TV’ is replete with
such pen-pictures:
Women crying
around debris
men hurling abuses
children confused and despaired
the Patriots intercepting the Scuds
the showers of bullets
downing the planes, and
the bombs piercing things, homes …. (Shrine 55)
The pictures of women crying around
broken buildings, men expressing their rage against an aggression, and children not be
able to understand what is happening are indications of the havoc that a war
causes. A parallel settings have been painted in ‘A Familiar Scene’ in which
the bodies of slain soldiers and the other victims of war are lying discarded
in garbage and rolling in ditches as there is none to perform their last rites:
Bodies rolling in ditches
or dumped with the garbage.
Bodies washing up
on to the beaches
like bundles of clothes
or lying discarded
in open mass graves
heaped together
in grotesque piles. (Shrine
68)
It is immensely pitiable that the bodies
of the soldiers who have died for their country have been left uncared for. Gill
does not remain contended with this, but goes to say that when these people
were alive they had their dreams, aspirations and visions. They were not
inanimate or thoughtless. Their dreams and aspirations have also died with
them: In half-shut eyes / Their dreams
are now stones, / Bodies wrapped with red /Lie in the lap of dust.(Shrine 69)
It is the dreams of people that
make them work to make shining achievements in life. For example,
Gill writes in the same poem ‘A Familiar
Scene’:
Here is a mother
who moves the corpses
to find her son;
here is the cry of an old man
buried in the cries of the wounded. (Shrine 69)
It has been suggested that wars make the dependents
of the victims helpless because they are
left without a bread-earner and therefore dependents have to lead a life of deprivation. The
sight of a mother trying to identify the body of her son among the corpses
lying uncared for and an old man crying for his son are pathetic.
Gill does not keep himself confined
to the sufferings of unidentified people only. He writes also about people who have been
identified. For instance, in
‘Somali Victim of 1992 Tribal Warfare’ he narrates the story of a
boy who is admitted to a hospital. He illustrates the condition of the boy in the
following words:
he has not eaten for days
it may be his rapacity
for the food of the village
or because he gave up hope.
Life has not yet crept back
into his sight.
He may not remember
his days at home
because of fever
and constant headaches.
(Shrine 73)
This boy is a victim of the tribal warfare: When / the tribal smoke of animosity /
overshadowed the smiling landscapes / of
The nurse says
swollen limbs mean
the case is desperate.
A famished body
eats its own fat
and finally protein for energy.
Muscles weaken,
Weakening the heart. (Shrine 75)
This is tantamount to saying that what
happens during warfare may uproot families, may cause them financial losses,
and may even wipe them out from the face of the earth. Gill adds further: Around him lay / emaciated, rag-clothed kids./
Some have swollen bellies / and some sores on their heads, / hands or feet.
(Shrine 74). It is obvious that this boy is not the only
victim of war. There are several who share his fate.
Gill shows the effects of warfare also on cities. For example in ‘Bride
is Watching’ he illustrates how a war converts
Her lap has become
a slaughtering spot
with the swords
that had sheltered her home.
(Divergent shade 43)
Stephen Gill rejects the assertions of
the people who idealize
war, because it gives the victor a glory, it is fought for the
progress of the nation, it ends a misrule, it stops corruption, or it settles
disputes. In ‘About War’ he says:
Don’t tell me
war is a winning glory
it is to defend the land
and stop regression.
Don’t tell me
war is boosting pride
it is to end misrule
and to stop corruption. (Songs
for Harmony 21)
If wars are that bad, war-mongers must
be regarded as the tools of the forces of evil rather than those of the forces
of light. That is the reason why Gill describes war-mongers as the persons
getting sustenance from the land of darkness. He says in ‘Light of Truth’:
War-mongers are drinking
from the land of darkness.
The land of devils is empty
because its occupants
extend desert of savagery…(Divergent
shade 47)
Akin to them are the arms traders whom
Gill regards as insane when he says:
Sleeping in the web of greed
arms traders forget the dove
hidden in the caves of blood.
Appearing in the stage of the future
the coming generations will go insane
thinking of their insanity. (Shrine 50)
In his poem ‘Reptiles’, Gill tries to
identify the feelings which are inimical to peace and harmony. He asserts that
they are fanaticism and racism: : “ … a fanatic
reptile/ …hides among the shrubs/ where the flowers of peace / cannot
bloom” ( Songs for Harmony 47).
He calls the dungeons of racism cold and loveless when he says: “In
those sunless lands --/ Cold dungeons of racism --/ birds cannot fly” (Songs
for Harmony 47). Even in his poem
‘Evening of Harmony’,
he regards racial prejudices as the enemies of peace. He says: “…
the night of racial prejudice/ chews peace/ in the jaws of endless depth” (Songs
for Harmony 48)
Gill wants pacifism to be accepted as a
principle when he draws his readers’ attention to the fact that if there is one
more World War, it may cause the annihilation of the whole mankind. He
describes it in his poem ‘If There Be a Third World War’ in which he writes:
If another war breaks out
no one may survive
to watch white front of the moon
that is often so fascinating
and to sit in pleasant warmth
of the sunshine…..
seasons may come and go
but no singer to glorify them. (Songs of Harmony 23)
The onus of establishing peace in the
world, according to Gill, is not only on rulers but also on leaders, statesmen
and even on ordinary citizens. He expresses this opinion in his poem ‘Talking
of Peace’. Here he reminds the people of these categories of what they have
been doing to damage the cause of peace. He finds it hypocritical on the part
of rulers to talk of peace when they have armed their countries with nuclear weapons to
the teeth. He laments:
Our rulers talk of peace
but it is futile
when nuclear-powered marines
sail over breasts of the oceans;
missiles look down
and neutrons
make fun of every life.
(Shrine 46)
The implication is that rulers can be
sincere in their efforts for peace only when they adopt disarmament as a matter of
policy. Gill expects politicians, in case they are sincere in their efforts for
peace, to enable citizens not to be intimidated by murderers as he says in this
poem ‘Talking for Peace’:
Our politicians want peace
but it cannot be achieved
as long as citizens are locked
in the prison of their fears;
their daily bread,
doled out by murderers,
and love worshipped
with bullets. (Shrine 46)
Gill wants leaders to free people from
tensions of human relations, to remove their ignorance, and to see that their
basic needs are gratified as he writes:
Our leaders
envision peace
but it can never be real
if homes are destroyed
by tensions of human relations;
the arteries of ignorance
continue hardening
and the merciless locusts
of the basic needs
keep buzzing
over individuals and lands.
(Shrine 47)
The implication of the statement is that
real peace can be attained only when family life is free from tensions, people
are no more ignorant and their basic needs are gratified. He may be saying so
in view of the fact that if the inhabitants of a country find it difficult to gratify their
needs, they tend to attack other countries.
Gill expects also common citizens to work for peace. He expects them to
shorten the arms of darkness, to reduce the heaps of arsenal and to get rid of
pollution. This is what he means in this poem:
Our citizens
crave
peace
but it shall remain a dream
because
the arms of darkness grown
longer;
the crop of the arsenal is
raised
and the demons of pollution
stand tormenting us. (Shrine
47)
Gill also wants criminals to be punished
and autocrats be
stopped from dominating citizens:
Everyone
discusses peace
but it leads nowhere
when there is no accounting
of criminals;
and the subjects are dominated
by the cruelty of the autocrats. (Shrine 48)
No doubt, disarmament can free the
world from the fear of an armed war, but no single country can be expected to
disarm itself as nobody can assure it that it shall never be attacked. Poet is right when he
shows how wars cause deaths and destruction but there remains the question as
to what a victim of wrongs should do in order to stop the hand of the
wrong-doer, in case he resolves not to fight. Gill should have made a
distinction between a war
to rob and a war to escape
from being robbed. The second kind of war cannot be regarded as unjustifiable.
There have been thinkers who have rejected the use of weapons to achieve one’s end , but they have offered alternatives. For example, Thoreau offered the path of
passive resistance as an alternative to an armed resistance. Mahatma Gandhi
resorted to the use of non-cooperation in his fight against the British rulers
of
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gill,
Stephen. Divergent
Shades.
10…sharma-gill
--------------- Shrine: Poems of Social Concern. Benson:
-------------- Songs for Harmony.
Glimpses:
A Selection of Published Articles about Stephen Gill and His Books.
Professor
B.D. Sharma teaches at Hi-Tech Institute of Technology and Engineering in
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