I discovered Wilfred Owen over the summer in a tiny Penguin Classics collection, about fifty pages long, containing some of his most well-known war poems. As someone who historically has struggled with understanding and interpreting poetry, I never struggled with Owen. Something about his writing just clicks in my head and my heart. He is the first poet who’s work has ever made me cry.

As for my poem selection, “A Terre” is a French phrase that means “on the ground” or “to earth,” and is told from the perspective of a dying soldier in a hospital, directed at an unknown listener, likely a very young one, but it is easy as the reader to put yourself in the place of the addressee. The soldier laments about what he would do if he were physically sound again, even the most menial of jobs.

The beauty of this poem to me is the returning to the natural world, the images of wind and lilac shoots and the sun, and how once returned to the earth, even war will no longer disturb him. There is so much humanity in this soldier–he is angry, sarcastic, gentle, yearning, tired all in turn. But even though he is going to die, there is this thread of peace in being reunited to the earth. It’s a sort of closure which I found almost fitting as the semester comes to a close as well.

Poppy field video credits: Atomic Shrimp on Youtube: Slow TV–Poppy Field