year on year

year on year trumpets sound

thin notes echoing
fading notes on dead walls

year on year a minute’s silence
shutters the sound of guns
and the scream of munitions

year on year
someone who was never there
repeats the dried-out name of valour

year on year war dragged on
dragged too many bodies down
in callous accidents of ordnance

   some believe the white corpses
   fell there for freedom
   for some kind of covenant
   with a tomorrow they would not see

   some believe the red poppies grew
   as a reminder of something other
   than wounded earth and mutilation
   as if blood soaked ground was not enough

   but slighted aristocratic pride
   and the honour of empires outranked
   the torn and threadbare apprentice boys
   who left their patriotic flesh behind

year on year drums still beat
to the rhythms of conflict
the sacrifice of youth is still
a luxury only generals can afford

year on year
trumpets begin to sound more like glory
and we remember less of the wasted lives
given up to futilities of armament

© BH, 2020

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Every couple of years, I listen to the radio and hear the solemn remembrances again. And I can’t help feeling bleak. As time goes on, no-one questions the sacrifice, what so many young men gave up, in their fervour and their folly, in their acceptance of duty and the inevitability of higher purpose. I think, if only that were true.

No-one questions the way duty spun its net around them, and why and how the spinning was a convenience for those prosecuting war in a clash of empires. (And also a spat between cousins - but lets not get into that!)

Now it’s become a defining identity in the national psyche. I don’t think now we remember the fallen as victims of a horror perpetuated by the powerful for their own ends. Rather, we see them in a misty heroism that confirms our desire to maintain a sense of good old pluck and uncritical loyalty.

War is regrettable but never futile, the dead and wounded collateral damage, never lambs (innocent or not) to slaughter.

NB. The illustration is based on a white peace poppy (with dove), over a WW1 bugle with Queen Victoria's profile on the bell, superimposed on a WW1 combat image with a biplane sky. Published on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month…