The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month

POPPY


What does it mean?

(does it mean anything
 to whom
 when)

What difference did it make?
(did it make any difference
 to those who died
 to those who survived
 did anyone survive)

What difference has it made?
(to me
 to you
 to those)

Where are those now?
(where are the others)

The bullet links shooter and shot?
(if one goes up can the other go down
 if both go up…
 if both go down…)

And you?
(and me
 and those)


11TH HOUR, 11TH DAY, 11TH MONTH

November Rose.
Pink and white and mauve.
Solitary, still,
among the rosemary and late autumnal gorse.


Sea winds have blown.
The first frosts have frozen the short grass.
Spring and summer are memories,
midwinter an echo in reverse.


November Rose for the dying.
November Poppies for the dead,
who cannot sleep
but stream towards new birth;
whose pain outlasts
the bitter Flanders earth.






REQUIEM: ARMISTICE DAY 1995

This year
the dead are blind
and do not seem to hear
our prayers.

Nor do they seem to mind
that we now own
what they once thought was theirs.

Here
they shed no tear
at all the pain
they left behind.

Now,
when they come again,
they only find
echoes of the long-ago,
and landscapes that they hardly know;
deserted buildings, unpeopled streets,
lonely corridors, empty rooms,
where each his own image meets
in every shape it now assumes.




New Project: INSIDE OUT OR OUTSIDE IN ?
Normally, if something is inside out (like a sock for instance) it will be outside in as well. So the conjunction would be "and". In this case the conjunction is "or".