Today’s poem was written in 2004 and appeared in my 4th collection the following year; it has also appeared in an anthology, The Colour of War, Forward Press, 2011.
I have
written almost as many poems about the tragedy of war as I have about the
inspiring quality of love, much influenced by the powerful poems of World War I
poets like Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Vera Brittain, to
name but a few.
The irony
cannot be lost on anyone. Given that the horrors of war have been passed on so
graphically from generation to generation since, it neither prevented World War
II nor this sorry world of ours remaining a battleground for various socio-cultural-religious-political
forces worldwide.
Here in the UK, as Armistice Day approaches, many of us buy a poppy as a symbol of remembrance; the money raised goes to the British Legion, a charity that, for many years, has provided financial, social and emotional support to members of the British armed forces, veterans, and their dependants.
National anniversaries of remembrance rightly salute the dead, but the dead would not want those they leave behind or injured friends and colleagues who survive to be forgotten either. Charities like the British Legion and Help for Heroes have stepped in where successive Governments much prefer not to tread.
Countless poppies, countless
tears; hopes, shared by millions for a peaceful world while haunted by the growing sense of a twenty-first century no less inclined than any other to the rhetoric of peace.
Photo: Cenotaph war memorial, London (UK)
Created
by ceramic artist Paul Cummins with setting by stage designer Tom Piper;
ceramic poppies commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of World War
scheduled to progressively fill the dry moat around the Tower of London until
Armistice Day, November 11th, 2013.
Photo: In the war memorial Neue Wache (Berlin) the moving
sculpture, 'Mother and her dead son' by the Berlin artist Kathe Kollwitz says
it all...
POPPIES, FOR REMEMBRANCE
In two
world wars, and conflicts since, they died
for love
of country, freedom and their own;
shells,
mortars, bullets and bombs they defied
so we may
reap the rewards they have sown
Let’s
remember those who never came back,
(sitting
comfortably, watching TV);
Somme,
Dunkirk, Korea, Falklands, Iraq...
(So much
for the lessons of history!)
The
wounded, too, deserve our thanks and pride,
some
forgotten, left but to fade away
in pain,
loneliness, no one at their side
as fought
with them so bravely, won the day
World in remembrance of hope, prayers and tears
for peace in its time to yet end its worst fears
[From: A Feeling for the Quickness of
Time by R. N. Taber,
Assembly Books, 2005]