Recalling ‘The Song of the Mud’

For my first blog of 2024 I thought I’d write about poetry for a change. I’ve been thinking a lot about the First World War recently, partly because I’ve been writing about it in my fiction. One of my Christmas books was Ishion Hutchinson’s wonderful book length poem, School of Instructions, which explores the experiences of West Indian volunteers in British regiments during the war. This book is a pleasure in itself, but when I encountered one particular verse that lists a whole range of different muds, I was reminded of one of my favourite poems of the First World War: ‘The Song of the Mud’ by Mary Borden.

Borden is one of the most compelling writers of the war, and The Forbidden Zone, her 1929 collection of stories, fragments and poems based on what she observed as the directrice of a French Army Hospital, is a must read for many. My copy appears to be a first edition, although the broken spine is nothing to be proud of. ‘The Song of the Mud’, which is included here, was first published in 1917 and belies any suggestions that women did not see the horrors of the war as clearly as men. Borden was in the thick of it. In her poem, the mud covers everything and anyone in the battle zone, the true winner of this conflict.

This is the song of the mud,

The pale yellow glistening mud that covers the hills like satin;

The grey gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel over the valleys;

The frothing, squirting, spurting, liquid mud that gurgles along the road beds;

This is the Western front as we imagine it, but with a sinister aestheticism. The long list of adjectives, each one more evocative than the last, builds up a sensual picture of the mud. Borden uses colour and alliteration to enhance the sensuality. It is almost human at times. It is both beautiful, like satin, an example of the domestic imagery that fills Borden’s work, and at the same time, repellent. It is a work of art, enamelling the landscape. The language is tactile, we can hear the mud gurgling and feel its elasticity, kneaded, pounded and squeezed; we can almost smell it. The rhythms of the poem as we read it recreate the sensations; we fight with the words as the combat soldiers had to fight with the mud. There are five poems in the original edition of The Forbidden Zone, but this is the one that draws me back every time.

The Forbidden Zone was republished in 2008 (link below), but sadly without the poems. It’s still worth a look, and the stories and sketches deserve a blog of their own. Perhaps even next time. But Borden’s poems can be found online and are often included in anthologies now that her voice is fully recognised as an important one documenting the First World War.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Forbidden-Zone-Nurses-Impressions-Hesperus/dp/1843914433/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1NF63LH4TCPG7&keywords=The+Forbidden+Zone&qid=1705673564&sprefix=the+forbidden+zone%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-1