Two Minutes

I don’t need silence

for memory to work
even when remembering
becomes that different thing
remembrance

these are colours
shades of meaning
interpretation
as if a gloss
must be put
upon our minds’ eyes

I of course
have no memory
of so far back
of war and destruction
I remember
only what I have been told of it
and my remembering then
is a hollow not a hallowed place

remembrance
becomes a posture
a stern face that could be
heavy sorrow
or haughty disregard

I am asked to remember
as a gesture
to show compliance
real respect for the dead
(none of them glorious
only ruined)
has nothing to do with it

none of this
recalls the truth
of anything

© BH, 2018

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I had just listened to David Dimbleby on the BBC at the Cenotaph. Felt hollow. Wrote this in the two minutes silence.

Later in response, a friend asked, ‘…as for the content, what would you replace the ceremony with, if anything?’

I replied, ‘I’d not replace it. Remembering the horror and loss of war is important. I just have a problem with how we may be - to quote Sam Edwards of in the Independent “…remembering the Great War in a certain way - as… horrific, yet necessary; terrible, yet worthy.”

Sam Edwards' article in the Independent.

Being an ageing peacenik, I suppose I have similar concerns to the Co-operative Women’s Guild and the Peace Pledge Union who conceived the white poppy as a symbol of peace back in the 1930’s; that, and a sense that, today, the casualties of war include civilians who too often go unremembered.

I wrote the poem during the two minutes silence as my own way of remembering, thinking about how truth and memory change over time.

And I found another article about commemoration, from CND.