In praise of water
Norman Cameron's El Aghir, which was written in 1942, describes a war-time incident, but it is not a war poem. Great are the blessings given to those who have plenty of water, says Cameron. The Scottish poet imparts the moral of the story — to them that hath shall be given — with irony rather than pomposity.
El Aghir
Sprawled on the bags and crates in the rear of the truck,
I was gummy-mouthed from the sun and the dust of the track;
And the two Arab soldiers I'd taken on as hitch-hikers
At a torrid petrol-dump, had been there on their hunkers
Since early morning. I said, in a kind of French
'On m'a dit, qu'il y a une belle source d'eau fraiche.
Plus loin, a El Aghir.' It was eighty more kilometres.
Until round a corner we heard a splashing of waters,
And there, in a green, dark street, was a fountain with two facets,
Discharging both ways, from full-throated faucets,
Into basins, thence into troughs and thence into brooks.
Our Negro corporal driver slammed his brakes,
And we yelped and leapt from the truck and went at the double
To fill our bidons and bottles and drink and dabble.
Then, swollen with water, we went to an inn for wine.
The Arabs came, too, though their faith might have stood between.
'After all,' they said, 'it's a boisson,' without contrition.
Green, green is El Aghir. It has a railway station,
And the wealth of its soil has borne many another fruit,
A mairie, a school and an elegant Salle de Fetes.
Such blessings, as I remarked, in effect, to the waiter,
Are added unto them that have plenty of water.
Norman Cameron (1905-1953)
Norman Cameron was not a very prolific poet, but everything he wrote was memorable. He died of a brain haemorrhage, and in Norman Cameron: His Life, Work and Letters, Warren Hope records that: "A spontaneous, private funeral, a kind of poet's wake, took place in a Greenwich Village Bar, when word of his death reached Dylan Thomas and Ruthven Todd in New York. They gathered as many of Cameron's poems as they could find and took turns reading them aloud to a crowd of truck drivers, longshoremen, painters, sculptors and writers, what Todd described as 'a remarkably appreciative audience'."
