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Wilfred Owen (published 1920) · Eduqas Poetry Anthology
EduqasAbout the text: Eduqas prints this poem across two pages, and the page turns after “a god in kilts.” A stanza break at a page turn leaves no gap to see, so the anthology’s layout cannot show whether a new stanza begins at “That’s why”. This page begins one there, as the first edition of Owen’s Poems (1920) does. Every other line and stanza break here is the anthology’s.
by Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was born in Oswestry, in Shropshire. He was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment and served in France from December 1916 until June 1917, when he was sent home. He was treated for shell shock at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon.
Owen went back to the Western Front in 1918 and won the Military Cross. He was killed on 4 November 1918, getting his men across the Sambre Canal, a week before the war ended. Few of his poems were published in his lifetime; his Poems, put together by Sassoon, appeared in 1920. Owen’s Preface to them says: "The Poetry is in the pity."
Disabled is about one of the war’s wounded, home again. In the British Army of the First World War a soldier had to be nineteen to serve overseas, so the "lie" the recruiters wrote down, "aged nineteen years", means he was younger than that when he joined.
“He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark”
The opening shows a man who can only sit and wait. "waiting for dark" is literal, the end of the day, and suggests a life with nothing left to wait for but its end.
“Legless, sewn short at elbow.”
Blunt and clinical. The adjective and the surgical verb list what has been done to his body without comment, and the full stop halfway through the line stops the reader as the injuries stopped him.
“before he threw away his knees”
A shocking understatement. "threw away" sounds careless, as if he wasted his knees himself, which hints at his own regret: he chose to join up, for reasons he now finds hard to explain.
“All of them touch him like some queer disease.”
Girls’ hands were once "warm" to him; now their touch is wary, as if he were "some queer disease". "queer", meaning strange, makes his body something to be avoided. The loss of desire and love is as cruel as the loss of his limbs.
“Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry”
His blood, "his colour", is poured away as if it were a liquid to be spent. "till the veins ran dry" makes the wound a draining of life itself, given "very far from here".
“Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts.”
The real reason he joined: vanity. A careless remark, by "Someone" unnamed, and the thought of looking like "a god" in a Scottish regiment’s kilt were enough. Owen shows how lightly a young man could be led to war.
“Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.”
The recruiters wrote the lie down with a smile: Owen suggests they knew he was under age and did not care. He accuses the system as well as the boy: the army wanted soldiers more than the truth.
“Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.”
The women’s eyes rest on him only to pass on. "whole" is the cruellest word: it names what he is not, and the line itself passes over him as their eyes do.
“Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn”
Happy sounds become sad to him. Comparing the boys’ voices to a hymn, church music often sung at funerals, connects their play with loss, because he can never play again.
“before he threw away his knees”
The casual verb makes a terrible injury sound like a careless act. The effect is bitter: it hints that he blames himself, and that he gave his body away cheaply.
“He’s lost his colour very far from here, / Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry”
His blood is "his colour": the healthy colour of a young face, lost with the blood itself. "Poured" makes it a waste, spent in shell-holes far from home.
“One time he liked a bloodsmear down his leg”
Blood from football was a badge of honour and won him a ride "shoulder-high". Blood from war has cost him his legs. The contrast shows how he imagined war as another game.
“He thought of jewelled hilts / For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes”
The list, broken up by semicolons, runs through the glamour of soldiering: daggers, salutes, "leave", "pay arrears", "Esprit de corps". None of it is about fighting, which is the point.
“Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.”
He went off "with drums and cheers"; he comes home to a few cheers, fewer than a goal would win. The football image returns to show how little his sacrifice is valued.
“Why don’t they come / And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?”
The repeated question ends the poem without an answer. He depends on others even to go to bed, like a child, and the repetition makes his helplessness and loneliness the last thing we hear.