A poet prized by many for his clarity and straightforward way with traditional forms, Charles Causley (1917–2003) could be enigmatic, too. A number of the poems in his first two collections (Farewell, Aggie Weston, 1951; Survivor’s Leave, 1953) drew on recent war experience (he was a coder in the Royal Navy), but none so subtly, perhaps, as “General Recall”, which turns the titular signal for sailing (the hoisting of the Blue Peter) into a romantic lament for the departed. Bloodshed and death-in-action and waves of pathetic fallacy wash over the decks: it is often hard to locate the real loss in all the high Miltonic drama of nocturnal reefs and “troops of light”. But perhaps that is the point: Causley was a coder, after all, and a Christian. And maybe a part of what he means to convey, here, is the way actual events and truths get lost in transmission: ships of slaughter are certainly not just metaphors. Equally, his use of the rhymed sestina, with its militarily precise variations, may indicate that, artistically, it is the code that matters. All we have to do is crack it.

General Recall

I saw my captain sail into the bay
In a glass ship along the reefs of night.
On the white deck her slaughtered pennants lay
Furled by the scarlet fingers of the fight.
Gagged were the guns that all the dazzled day
Shouted their speeches at the stammering light.

I saw the sun array his troops of light
Above the uneasy bastion of the bay,
And all the dour defenders of the night
Desert my ship, as innocent she lay,
Launching their weapons on the tide, to fight
For captains, comrades, on a different day.

All though the golden battles of the day.
I heard the bugler blast the alarm of light,
And in the guilty mirror of the bay
I saw the silver shilling of the night.
On her bold bed the unvirtuous ocean lay
To lure my hero from the long sea-fight.

Over the green arena of the fight
I saw the sun advance the device of day,
And all the leaping lancers of the light
Course their tall horses on the turning bay.
I saw the naked Nubians of the night
Run from the morning, where she rifled lay.

On the dark deck my sleeping captain lay
Wrapped in the raving banners of the fight,
Until the sulky linkmen of the day
Fired with their lamps the secret map of light,
Hurling its wealthy ashes on the bay
To fee the sentries for the captured night.

Captain, O comrades, when the guns of night
Feed with black fire the harbour-mouth, and lay
A screen of stars to shield me from the fight
Or blind my eyes to bandage me from day,
Set me abroad your springing ship of light!
Set your sail seaward from the punctual bay!

By the wheel lying all the dying night
I saw my hero strike his flag, and lay
His prize before the levies of the light.

CHARLES CAUSLEY (1952)

To read last week's Poem of the Week, "The Rich" by Charles Tomlinson, click here.

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