11. Is My Team Still Ploughing?

... being a response to the Poetry of A. E. Housman

Having confessed that I am a big fan of writing poetry about fathers and death. I have to say that I am also a fan of the poetry of A.E. Housman, who wrote a considerable amount of poetry about young men and death. He wouldn’t have used the term “young men,” though. He would have preferred to say “lads”, which in his day was a good term for young men. It didn’t have any of the baggage it has today, with terms like “bit of a lad”, “lad mags” and “a night out with the lads” creating a different picture to the one he intended. His lads were likeable, athletic youths, portrayed in a romantic light, in the prime of their lives. Which made their deaths particularly poignant.

Growing up in the Victorian era, Housman was much more attuned to living in the presence of death than we are, well over a century later. Disease, poverty and war ended many lives all too early. Houseman grew up in the years following the Crimean War and would have heard his elders discussing the great loss of many young lads who went away to that conflict and never came back alive. In 1879 when he was 20 The Zulu War came and would have taken the lives of many of his own generation. This must have affected him deeply, and provided him with plenty of material to write about.

His first collection of poetry - A Shropshire Lad, was published in 1896, and contained a lot of reflection on the death of young lads within its pages. It steadily gained popularity in the years that followed. His writing became increasingly relevant as more lads perished in the Boer War of 1899, and by the time of the First World War it was was the poetry of choice amongst young English soldiers in the trenches. It must also have been something of a comfort to the survivors, not only the soldiers who returned, shellshocked, bewildered and missing many of their comrades, but also the families and lovers of the dead. As an atheist, Housman perhaps particularly reached those for whom the platitudes of religion held no comfort.

To me, Housman is somewhere between two of my other favourite English Poets, John Betjeman (largely cheerful) and Philip Larkin (largely miserable). They all have an academic air about them, but choose to use plain language and ordinary subjects to write about. Housman’s poetry seems, at least to my ear, like a link between Thomas Hardy (his contemporary) and the other two (who were born a couple of generations later). Larkin was obsessed with death too, but he was mainly obsessed about his own death, Housman was more concerned with the death of fit young lads than elderly poets.

Is My Team Ploughing? is my very Favourite Housman poem. It takes the form of a dialogue between a dead man and one of his still living friends. The dead man asks if life is going on in the same manner as it did when he was alive. The living one tells him that everything is much the same - but becomes a little coy when the dead one asks how his old girlfriend is getting on. It has a grim humour and is one of the few poems that I know which mentions football. This fact gives it an extra three points in my referee’s notebook.

"Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?"

Ay the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands up, the keeper
Stands up to keep the goal.

When I first read it I decided to write a sequel, in which the dead man had a similar exchange with someone still living today. It amused me to think of the poor chap still having wistful conversations having been dead in his grave for well over a hundred years. I kept his voice almost unchanged, but altered each answer to bring it up to date. What would Housman think of it? He would probably want to box my ears.

"Is my name remembered?
And is my verse still read
By people who like poetry
Though I am long since dead?"

Aye lad, they read your poems still,
Matured, like fine wines
But some scoundrel's tried to ruin one 
By changing half the lines.

At the time that I wrote this poem, the government were still determined to press ahead with the HS2 railway linking London to the North of England. Like so many Conservative promises, that has since been abandoned, but the sentiment of the poem still stands, as they have also abandoned the idea of making it difficult to build on green belt land, further reducing opportunities to hear the song of larks and chaffinches.

My good Friend Frank Colley recently delivered a session on Housman at the Doncaster Read to Write group. Frank is featured this week in Sixty Odd Poets - the companion substack to this one.

Is My Team Still Ploughing

“Is my team still ploughing, 
That I was used to drive 
And hear the harness jingle 
When I was man alive?” 

Nay lad, we use machinery
Huge vehicles to plough; 
You’ve been away for such a time
It’s all so different now. 

“Is football still playing 
Along the river shore, 
With lads to chase the leather, 
Now I stand up no more?” 

Nay, the ball lies rotting
The lads, they stay indoors
And watch by satellite TV
Or just look at the scores

“Is my girl happy, 
That I thought hard to leave, 
And has she tired of weeping 
As she lies down at eve?” 

Your girl died some time ago, 
At eighty-six years old: 
Three children, seven grandchildren. 
And great grandkids untold. 

“Is the county lovely, 
With its idyllic country fine, 
With rolling hills and meadows
Now I am thin and pine?” 

Yes, lad, it’s still as beautiful, 
And larks and chaffinch sing; 
But they’re about to run a high speed 
Railway line through everything.