"Banishment" by Sassoon and my trades kids.

It’s the time of year when we remember the dead…All Hallow’s Eve, All Soul’s Day, Remembrance Day. 

For those of us who have the gift/curse of intuitive connections to those on the other side, this time of year is a violent pendulum swing between inspiration and despair – the pain of living without those we have lost, the pride of having them connected to us in some way, and the gratitude of having known them at all. 

The thresholds between the worlds are so thin right now that it is not unusual to dream of, hear, or feel those spirits we wish to reach out to.  For this I am thankful.

So, with that in mind I have chosen my first poem to share here.  It is from this poem I have lifted the name of my blog..

Banishment

I am banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.

The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.

Siegfried Sassoon

There are certain pieces we stumble across in our lives:  music, art, poems, or places that reflect our inner selves in a way that we could not do.  This poem is one such piece for me.  I stumbled across it this summer whilst reading the first half of Siegfried Sassoon’s biography.  The last three lines were placed in context of Sassoon’s protest against the war, to the shock and embarrassment of many of his friends.  When I read the line “…Love drove me to rebel…” I gasped.  How succinctly he has put my whole life philosophy! 

Everything I have done in my life that has been an act of rebellion has been for the love of someone or something.

In my career it has been for the love of the kids I teach.  My love has landed me on opposite sides of many of my colleagues and has caused me to stand nearly alone on many issues – especially when it comes to dealing with kids who are more challenging.

In my life it has been loving whomever I love with no remorse.  This has cost me connection to my family.

So, you see, when I step against something or someone it is because of my love for the thing opposite – noble reason to rebel, I think.

I immediately saw the connection between myself and my trades kids – I felt, by the end of the last school year, that we had been through hell and back together with the loss of our beloved D. 

Now that I have had to leave them, this poem feels even more real to me.

Allow me to explicate:

“I am banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.”

The banishment of which Sassoon speaks is, in his mind, of his own making – he felt as though he had abandoned his men when he protested against the war and was sent to Craiglockhart as a “mental case.”  He felt as though his actions cost him his connection to his men.

I, too feel as though I have walked away from my “boys” - the boys who crossed into my heart and made me so proud to be in theirs.  We walked a harsh, painful road together, continue to walk together, into the darkness of anguish we could not understand and still do not fully understand.  I took on their defeat and tried so hard to make them understand that they are so much more than they feel they could ever be.  I am proud of who they have become in the face of the challenges of their lives because I am one of them.

I scream to whom ever will hear me about what they need – how they need to be supported to succeed.  I rant and alienate myself from my colleagues.  I rage to admin – local and upper – to try and get these boys what they need because if any kids in the district deserve a break, they do.

“The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.”

“The darkness” that is telling “how vainly I have striven to free them from the pit where they must dwell in outcast gloom…” is, for me the fact that I have chosen to step away from the place for a while.  The grief and the power of memory have made my ability to be present in that space almost impossible.  I had to admit to myself that I just couldn’t do it any more because the darkness was too much.

For me the beauty is in the last 3 lines.  Even though I have had to step away, I know that “Love drives me back to grope with them through hell; And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.”  I will find, like Sassoon did when he returned to his “boys” in the trenches, my “boys” will forgive me and welcome me back.  I will “stand forgiven” to myself in return.

Those “boys” mean the world to me and always will.  I have an immeasurable love and respect for those kids that only those who have worked with similar kinds of kids can know.  When you fight through something “shoulder to shoulder” with someone you can’t help but be transformed by them.

I have been transformed by my trades “soldiers.”