Med Rib

November 2003
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 11 November 2003

My quiet place

Cleveden, Glasgow.

Autumn, 2002


  comment []5:36:49 PM    

Remembrance Day

 

Scarlet poppies (popaver rhoeas) grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. The destruction brought by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century, transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of the fallen soldiers.

 

I had the opportuniy to do 6 months of War Poetry at grammar school.  I remember clearly sitting at my G.C.S.E. English exam desk frowning at how I spelt Siegfried Sassoon.  Even when spelt correctly, it still looked wrong to my eye.

I include his poem,

Aftermath

HAVE you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same-and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.


Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench-
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads-those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.


Siegfried Sassoon, 1920

BBC Remembrance

I have fond memories of those days at school and of Flanders.


  comment []5:11:39 PM    

More women break into boardrooms

Judging by Radio 5's phone in show this morning, there are A LOT of unhappy blokes out there. 

Hard cheese.

 

 


  comment []5:08:02 PM