UK_Widowmaker Posted November 1, 2015 Posted November 1, 2015 I thought this was rather nice. THE POPPYI am not a badge of honour,I am not a racist smear,I am not a fashion statement,To be worn but once a year, I am not glorificationOf conflict or of war.I am not a paper ornamentA token, I am more. I am a loving memory,Of a father or a son,A permanent reminderOf each and every one. I'm paper or enamelI'm old or shining new,I'm a way of saying thank you,To every one of you. I am a simple poppyA Reminder to you all,That courage faith and honour,Will stand where heroes fall. Paul Hunter 2014 1 Quote
Olham Posted November 1, 2015 Posted November 1, 2015 (edited) Beautiful poem, Widowmaker! Somewhere I had read, that every poppy in Flanders stands for a fallen young soul. A frightening thought, when you have ever been there; when you have seen these huge Flanders poppy fields; how many poppies there grow, each like a stain of blood... Edited November 1, 2015 by Olham Quote
xrearl Posted November 1, 2015 Posted November 1, 2015 I did not know any of the history of the poppy as remembrance. l googled it now i have some reading to do.Thanks Quote
KJakker Posted November 2, 2015 Posted November 2, 2015 In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place: and in the sky The larks still bravely singing fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the dead: Short days ago, We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved: and now we lie In Flanders fields! Take up our quarrel with the foe To you, from failing hands, we throw The torch: be yours to hold it high If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields by John McCrae 1915 1 Quote
Hauksbee Posted November 2, 2015 Posted November 2, 2015 I am not a racist smear, I don't understand this line. What could be racist about poppies? What's a smear? (a slur?) Quote
Olham Posted November 2, 2015 Posted November 2, 2015 A "racist smear" is some sign or text line a racist smeared on a wall - or so I understand it. Hauksbee, here is a video of the installation 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' - it sees the Tower of London's famous dry moat filled with 888,246 poppies, one for each British and Colonial fatality during the war. Quote
+Menrva Posted November 2, 2015 Posted November 2, 2015 Thanks for sharing these beautiful poems! Quote
UK_Widowmaker Posted November 2, 2015 Author Posted November 2, 2015 Hauksbee..sadly, in the UK..the Far Right have been using the poppy (as well as our flag) for their own racist agenda's..and the Poppy has (to some) become a badge for the filthy Nazis who use it to inflame communities. So yes...the poet was saying it shouldn't be used in that manner Quote
Hauksbee Posted November 2, 2015 Posted November 2, 2015 Thanks, guys, for the explanation(s). Over here we'd call the 'racist smear'='racist graffitti'. The Poppy Installation at the Tower of London is particularly impressive. I recall when I was young, we used to celebrate "Armistice Day" on Nov.11. Veteran groups would have guys on every street corner selling red paper poppies to raise money, and everyone would being wearing one in their lapel button hole. People would look at you oddly if you didn't have one. Now, Armistice Day has become Veteran's Day (remembering all our wars) and nobody sells poppies any more. More's the pity. When I watched Olham's video, at first I thought I was seeing those old paper poppies, no doubt delivered by the truck-load and dumped around the tower. But at the end of the video, where it defaults to a YouTube selection of similar vids, there was one on the making of that installation. It turns out that each poppy was not a little paper one, but a life-sized flower done in ceramic, mounted on a metal rod and carefully pressed into position by hundreds and hundreds of people. Suddenly the statement got much bigger and deeper. It was a very powerful way, not only to remember the dead, but to get your mind around the enormity of the number. On occasion, a similar tribute is created on battlefields of the American Civil War, with votive candles in paper bags. Particularly on fields where the butcher's bill was especially high: Antietam, Shiloh, and Gettysburg. Seeing these, one wonders how anyone could will himself to go forward across such withering fields of fire. But they did. . Quote
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