henryclervals:

“The tendency to generalise during First World War commemorations means it’s easy to evade the nature of the relationship between poet and subject which, in the end, drives what Wilfred Owen termed the “pity of war”: love, longing, lust, rage, despair, “the rough male kiss of blankets” and the “youth that dying touched my lips to song” all inter-mingled. For isn’t love to be found in the red mouths and red wounds and pale young faces peering out from under a steel hat? Isn’t it in the winding of puttees over a strong calf, the muddy fingers parting dirty blond hair, the clear blue eyes half-lidded over a smile? Above all isn’t it in the boy who died last night while laying new wire across no-mans land; the athlete who read Homer and loved Housman; the sensitive lad who hid a copy of Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ in his knapsack; the young men who might be “so” in the jargon of the time?”

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‘Youth that dying touch my lips to song’: The poetry of men who loved men in the First World War’, Kevin Childs