Summary
"Mametz Wood" is a poem that deals with the terrible effects of war on humanity and the earth. The poem begins in the "years afterwards" following the battle at Mametz Wood, describing how farmers came across the bones of "wasted young" as they plowed the earth.
The second stanza lists the bones that the farmers unearthed, including evocative descriptions of a shoulder blade as a "china plate" and a skull as a "broken bird's egg." The artifacts of these bones are "mimicked now in flint," disrupting the color of the natural landscape in the third stanza.
The poet brings the focus back into the present in the fourth stanza, where "even now" the earth stands guard as it reaches into itself to remember what happened. The simile "like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin" casts the horrors of war as a disease-causing agent. Remembrance and reckoning are the path to healing. (Lines 10-12).
The image that inspired the poem appears in the next stanza: twenty men buried with linked arms, wearing boots that outlasted them. Some are missing jaws, but those that have them have dropped open. (Lines 13-18). In the final lines of the poem, the notes that the soldiers had sung have found their way into the present as a result of uncovering the burial site.
Analysis
"Mametz Wood" unfolds the terrible implications of an uncovered gravesite, evoking a broader discussion about how war affects humanity and the land. The first stanza situates us in a farmer's field in the "years afterwards" following a battle (Line 1). This shows that the occasion of the poem (the battle) reaches across the distance of time to impact the present. This battle is not explicitly stated in the poem's title or first stanza; it requires knowledge or research on the part of the reader to know the historical specificities of the poem's occasion.
In 1916, the 38th (Welsh) Division fought the Germans for control of Mametz Wood during World War I. Around 4,000 Welsh soldiers were killed. Sheers does not dive into immediate violent scenes of the battle, which serves to highlight the horrors of later descriptions. This holding back on the part of the poet is supported by the consonance of the "f" sound in the first line "For years afterwards the farmers found them." The result is an airy, breathless sound that conveys mystery.
The "wasted young" turning up under the plow blades of farmers is the first line of explicit violence in the poem (Line 2). The past events that spiral into the present reveal Sheers' talent in portraying a sweeping narrative in a lyrical poem. The role of farmers is to cultivate plants and animals, but as "they [tend] the land back into itself," other things begin to emerge. (Lines 1-3).
Beginning with a "chit of bone," the remains the farmers uncover are conveyed in a list in the next stanza (Line 4). The word "chit" has multiple meanings, including a short note stating an owed sum and a sprout. Both imply something telling: the bone being a message of unpaid debt, or being as fragile—but also as productive—as a plant sprout emerging from the ground. The next description is even more specific, comparing a scapula to a china plate (Line 4). Despite its fragile appearance, china—and particularly a material called bone china—is a strong and durable material. However, likening the bone to a plate presents it as a material from which food is eaten, thus opening the question of who is served by this death. In religion, relics—particularly the first-class relics of body parts—carry the significance of helping prove a saint's holiness. However, the "relic of a finger," like all the rest of the descriptions, serves only to distance these bones from the people they once belonged to (Line 5). The "broken bird's egg of a skull," like the description of the "wasted young," symbolizes a young life that ended too soon (Line 6). It is a disruption in the natural cycle of things.
Alliteration occurs multiple times in the third stanza, first with the repetition of the "ch" sound: "A chit of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade" (Line 4). This has a jarring effect used for emphasis. The repetition of the "b" sound in the entire stanza also contributes to a sense of urgency building in this second stanza: "...bone...blade...blown...broken [bird]..." (Lines 4-6). As a plosive consonant, the "b" sound is made by closing the mouth and releasing in a burst of breath, creating a sense of harshness. That these forms of harsh alliteration are used to describe vestiges from the past articulates their significance in the present. This is an example of Sheers using a poetic device to reach across lines of distance (in this case, time) to create connection.
In the third stanza, the bones are described as "all mimicked now in flint, breaking blue in white / across this field..." (Lines 7-8). A mimicry is different from an original, and loses some of its original properties. These bones break the presumably blue pebbles of the field with their white color—thus disrupting the landscape.
The poet then uses various forms of contrast to create the drama of the battle. It is the first time that the poem directly describes the scene of the battle: "this field where they were told to walk, not run" towards the waiting German defensive formation (Line 8). The instruction "to walk, not run," contrasts the violent speed of machine guns, as well as forcing the reader to imagine the terror of the battle. This exemplifies the poet's choice to describe the horrors of war with images that suggest slowness. It is no mistake that farmers, whose work is slow and time-consuming, are the first to uncover these bones.
The other detail to note in this stanza is the image of the "nesting machine guns" (Line 9). Machine gun "nests" are fortified defensive positions built around automatic weapons, but the word "nesting" evokes an animal building a shelter for itself and its young, which is something that machine guns are obviously unable to do. Particularly after describing the soldiers' skulls as "broken [bird's eggs]" in an earlier line, this description of the guns is particularly evocative. It makes it seem as though the guns belong there as part of the natural landscape. Nesting is also another slow process, further illustrating the poet's use of slow details to describe war.
Though machine guns were invented earlier, World War I popularized and expanded their use; tens of thousands were manufactured. Moving across open land became more dangerous, which symbolizes a distance created between humans and nature as a result of technology.
The poem then returns to the present day, where "the earth stands sentinel" as it reaches back into itself to remember what happened (Lines 10-11). For the earth to stand "sentinel" poses the question of what the earth is guarding and what or who it is guarding against. The battle at Mametz Hill clearly left its mark upon the land, less of a scar that healed with time than a "wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin" (Line 12). The body in this simile refers not just to the physical bodies of soldiers that were buried there, but to all the implications of war: lives cut short, a changed landscape, the gruesome carnage of battle. Like in other poems from the Skirrid Hill collection, Sheers personifies nature as an example for humans to follow. If this remembrance and reflection are not done, then the wound will fester.
The next stanza focuses on the most striking image in the poem: twenty men buried together with linked arms. The scene is set "this morning" in the present day, thus creating an immediacy built on what is unearthed from the past. A mosaic is an image composed of smaller pieces, and here it is "broken" despite the fact that the bones are "linked arm in arm" (Line 14). This suggests that the bones are indistinguishable and unidentifiable as human individuals; they have lost their humanity as a result of the carnage. The skeletons are also "paused mid dance-macabre," juxtaposing the stillness of death with the movement of dance through the use of the dash (Line 15).
In the sixth stanza, the skeletons wear "boots that outlasted them," showing that a material created for the purpose of war was made to last longer than the person using it (Line 16). This is another example of the disturbing implications of war technology- it does not respect the natural cycles of things. The stanza continues on, depicting the angled tilt of the skeletons' "socketed heads," and the open jawbones of those that still have them (Lines 17-18). These various openings contrast the finality of death (itself a kind of closing). This contrast is furthered by the fact that the stanza is end-stopped.
If before, the skeletons had been "paused mid dance-macabre," here in the final stanza they have more access to expression: "...the notes they had sung / [...] / with this unearthing, / slipped from their absent tongues" (Lines 15 and 19-21). It is important to note that no words come through. The poet only gives the dead a space to sing; he does not specify their song. Ultimately, the reader is left with more questions than answers as to what may be recovered from the past, and what must be done to reckon with it. What is clear is that humans must learn to follow the earth's example in reflecting on what happened.
