John Cornford's poetry surrounds his wartime experiences. Whether writing about himself or another, Cornford presents the human experience of war as secondary to the human experience itself. His perspective reflects the idea that people are inherently capable both of immense harm and destruction and of intense virtue and goodness. Nevertheless, whatever the person experiences, they are a mere piece of an infinitely larger dialogue between the physical world and its principles and the interactions of individuals.
In a sampling of his poems -- "Poem [To Margo Heinemann]" and "Sergei Mironovitch Kirov" -- the reader can identify Cornford struggling to reconcile his own experiences of good and evil with one another. He holds Kirov up as an example of all that is wrong with the world. He was a force dedicated to his people, but his fight was cut prematurely short because of an organization opposed to the people's plight -- Stalin's government. Nevertheless, Cornford turns Kirov's death into a representation of the necessity of justice and honor in humanity's transactions with one another. Doubtless in response to his horrific experiences in the war, Cornford romanticizes his girlfriend back home as the epitome of love and goodness, neglecting to remember her own human shortcomings. In his fragile mental state, Cornford needs an ideal to remind himself to be strong and to persist. The subjects of the two poems contradict one another, but they form two necessary halves of the truth of human existence.
Taking "Full moon at Tierz: before the storming of Huesca" as an example of Cornford's poems, the reader can identify a deeper tone to Cornford's internal struggle. He is afraid, but he's more afraid of the seeming insignificance of his own life compared to the vastness of the physical world than he is afraid of dying in battle. Observing how fear has transformed his perception of reality, Cornford becomes increasingly uneasy in the poem. He struggles to find peace amid conflicting timelines and an overwhelming dread of the future. By the end of the text, however, he recognizes that he is powerless to defy the flow of time and must consequently summon the courage to face the future with as much dignity as he is able.
