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In his short autobiographical volume 'Tuppenny Stuns' (1994), the poet writes about his father's military service in the First World War.
The poem's title refers to the physical wounds which were inflicted in war on the poet's father and upon the three young soldiers, and to those inflicted upon innocent civilians (the helpless baby in its cot and the defenceless bus-conductor in his own living-room). But it also refers to the deeper psychological wounds, which will never heal (the mental trauma of Richard Longley, the on-going suffering of the relatives of the three young soldiers and of the bus-conductor's wife and children).
'Wounds' is written in blank verse and has a double structure. The opening movement focuses on violence perpetrated in the First World War before the poet was born but in which his father actively and heroically served. The second deals with violence which the poet himself witnessed in Northern Ireland during the early years of the Troubles.
The opening movement focuses on two memories of the First World War shared with the poet by his dying father one night a short time before his demise. These memories are contrasted with two specific contemporary events from early 1970's Belfast - the brutal slaying of three British soldiers in a pub toilet and the murder of a bus-conductor in his own home. Through the division in two long verses Longley creates a horrifying sense of a cumulative, pointless loss of (mostly young) lives.
In the first half of the poem the poet recalls two memories from 'my father's head', told to the poet by Richard Longley shortly before his death and significantly revealed 'now' for the first time by the poet. Paradoxically, while the memories recall the battle of the Somme (July - November 1916) the battle cries of the Ulster regiment on the battlefield of France are expressions of irrational, religious bigotry brought from Ulster. The naked hatred and violence of the language explode like artillery shells on the shocked ears of the reader.
'No Surrender'
'Give 'em one for the Shankill!'
The second 'picture' from inside his father's head is of the latter's time in the London-Scottish regiment which he had joined by mistake. The Scottish padre is a puzzling figure. There is something bizarre about his concern with making the bodies of the dead soldiers decent by rearranging their kilts with his military cane. While the action is essentially humane - restoring some measure of dignity to the dead - there is also the suggestion that the priest is not emotionally involved, that he might be almost be almost playing tennis with his 'stylish backhand', and that the prayer for the dead is merely an after-thought. The grotesque, undignified image - 'a landscape of dead buttocks' - contrasts with the earlier picture of vibrant young men as they uttered their bigoted battle cries and hurled themselves at the enemy. Now they lie silent and dead on the battlefield - a tragic waste of young lives. These horrific war-memories have haunted Richard Longley for nearly half a century.
The final lines of the opening movement return to the present as the poet recalls his father's death, a 'belated casualty' of a war-wound which finally turned cancerous. There is grim, eschatological humour in his father's comment
In the second movement of the poem the poet metaphorically re-enacts the burial of his father in 1960 and links it to contemporary events in Northern Ireland during the 1970's. Paradoxically, the poet attempts to express public grief at the fate of the three young soldiers and the bus conductor by linking it with the private grief he had experienced at the death of his father. War has tragically cut short all the victims' lives. But this war, with all its bloodshed, suffering and death, is not being fought on a faraway battlefield in Europe: it is being fought between fellow Irishmen in the poet's native Ulster. The poet buries with his father his badges, medals, cigarettes and matches (all mementoes of Longley Senior's wartime service). But he also metaphorically buries alongside him the three unarmed, off-duty British soldiers, victims of a cowardly attack in a pub toilet (the indignity of 'their flies undone' recalls the 'landscape of dead buttocks') and the civilian uniform of a bus conductor shot dead in his own living-room in front of his wife and children. This is a very different setting from the Somme battlefield. There the killing was public, heroic even. Here it is domestic, personal, cowardly - the dead man (who served both sides of the community) also has no weapon to defend him. The metaphorical placing of the picture of the Sacred Heart (a Catholic icon) in the communal grave symbolises the death of Christian compassion as merciless weapons of war have destroyed not just the lives of young soldiers on the Western Front in France or on the Northern Front in Ireland, and the life of a civilian bus-conductor, but the lives of succeeding generations 'for ever' (note the sense of utter finality in the phrase).
Longley tries to be objective and even shows a measure of sympathy for the 'shivering boy' who committed the terrible atrocity. The terrorist's belated realisation of the awful deed he has done is captured in his mumbled 'Sorry Missus'. This grotesque, totally inadequate apology to the victim's 'children and bewildered wife', as if he had merely knocked against her in the street, emphasises how the everyday reality of indiscriminate ('wandered in') sectarian murders in early 1970's Belfast has deadened moral response. The poet explained that the phrase 'I think' suggested
But of course 'I think' is more neutral than either of those and is intended to be ......'
'Wounds' expresses Michael Longley's compassion for all victims of violence, whether on the Western Front, on military service in Northern Ireland, or serving the community in a civilian uniform.
