Poetry - #ReclaimArmisticeDay

White poppies are the symbol of peace and remembrance of the harms done to everyone during war.

by Darryl Bullen

for the 100 year anniversary of Armistice

erased memories

flanders fertile faraway fields
nameless girl tending her generous cows
grazing lush poppy-dotted pastures
rosy cheeked milk fed belgian children
playfully blissfully unaware of impending hell
earsplitting bone shattering fragments
ripping into bodies and lives
ten million beating civilian hearts silenced
airbrushed by a cult of forgetfulness
erased memories

one hundred years of manipulated horror
soldiers lost in a futile mind-field
rosy cheeked milk fed australian children
climb jump touch smell interactive displays
war memorial discovery zones
simulated western front trench
iroquois hovering over vietnam
experience the malicious intent
avoid ever mentioning the nameless girl
erased memories

Armistice Day

by Judith Rodriguez

From book: Nu-plastic fanfare red

You ask me to buy a poppy
with death at its heart;
the blood fields sprouted fifty years back,
unusually heavy,
between vernal ovulations.
To me you cannot sell my father’s shock
at friends whirled underground,
schoolmates plucked
from their desks, the pure sky seared,
the standing cities mown.
The poppy has grown into oblivion.

I shall buy toadstools
rootless, lumpish and noxious,
the mooncalf-stuff of the mind
to deck out memory’s dell.
Puff, whack; it scatters inconsiderable
to be unseasonably reconstituted
in any windless damp;
herding into heroic shapes of reason
my generation’s casuistry, myself.
And that was twenty years ago and will
not teach my child to die, or not to kill.

Everyone Sang

by Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom,

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark-green fields; on – on – and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted;

And beauty came like the setting sun:

My heart was shaken with tears; and horror

Drifted away … O, but Everyone

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

A poem for Armistice Day
Remember Me

Harry Riley
(The voice of the dead)

Remember me
Duty called and I went to war
Though I’d never fired a gun before
I paid the price for your new day
As all my dreams were blown away

Remember me
We all stood true as whistles blew
And faced the shell and stench of Hell
Now battle’s done, there is no sound
Our bones decay beneath the ground
We cannot see, or smell, or hear
There is no death, or hope or fear

Remember me
Once we, like you, would laugh and talk
And run and walk and do the things that you all do
But now we lie in rows so neat
Beneath the soil, beneath your feet

Remember me
In mud and gore and the blood of war
We fought and fell and move no more
Remember me, I am not dead
I’m just a voice within your head

Harry Riley

Armistice Poetry Curated by Julanne Sweeney

Julanne has been an English teacher and community activist for over 60 years. But ..

Poetry is her passion.