The Poppy

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

I thought this was rather nice.

 

THE POPPY
I 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 glorification
Of conflict or of war.
I am not a paper ornament
A token, I am more.

I am a loving memory,
Of a father or a son,
A permanent reminder
Of each and every one.

I'm paper or enamel
I'm old or shining new,
I'm a way of saying thank you,
To every one of you.

I am a simple poppy
A Reminder to you all,
That courage faith and honour,
Will stand where heroes fall.

Paul Hunter 2014

 

[Olham 164]

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

[xrearl 27]

I did not know any of the history of the poppy as remembrance. l googled it now i have some reading to do.Thanks

[KJakker 902]

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

[Hauksbee 103]

I am not a racist smear,

I don't understand this line. What could be racist about poppies? What's a smear? (a slur?)

[Olham 164]

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.

 

[+Menrva 4,202]

Thanks for sharing these beautiful poems!  

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

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

[Hauksbee 103]

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.

.

[Olham 164]

[Hauksbee 103]

There y' go!