GuiltyPleasure
AWTSS
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2003
- Posts
- 14,131
Just a quick one. Remembrance Day is only a few days away. Find a way to commemorate/remember the poet's way.
I'll get the ball rolling.
Loss of Innocence
A cold wind sweeps down
from the Gatineau Hills
carrying remnants of winter.
Is it this sting that makes
these old eyes water
or the memories?
What horrors have they seen,
these prosaic people,
grizzled and bent,
standing here like monuments?
Comrades, together once more
to salute those left behind
at Dieppe,
at Juno beach,
at Kap Yong, *1
a Dai Chopan. *2
There were good times too,
friendships forged in the fires of war,
a pride that shines, even now,
in the rows of proudly polished medals
and in those same sad eyes.
Few who fought in those four
years remain to remind us.
Twenty million died, but still
we sacrifice our young.
As jets fly low, respectfully
in formation and guns fire
in the distance,
some wounds are too fresh
and young soldiers crumple,
weeping, mortally afraid once more.
A pride, if not remembrance,
is present in the eyes of a child
holding his mother’s hand
and in the other a picture
of yet another soldier lost in
Afghanistan.
*1 Vietnam War
*2 Afghan War
I'll get the ball rolling.
Loss of Innocence
A cold wind sweeps down
from the Gatineau Hills
carrying remnants of winter.
Is it this sting that makes
these old eyes water
or the memories?
What horrors have they seen,
these prosaic people,
grizzled and bent,
standing here like monuments?
Comrades, together once more
to salute those left behind
at Dieppe,
at Juno beach,
at Kap Yong, *1
a Dai Chopan. *2
There were good times too,
friendships forged in the fires of war,
a pride that shines, even now,
in the rows of proudly polished medals
and in those same sad eyes.
Few who fought in those four
years remain to remind us.
Twenty million died, but still
we sacrifice our young.
As jets fly low, respectfully
in formation and guns fire
in the distance,
some wounds are too fresh
and young soldiers crumple,
weeping, mortally afraid once more.
A pride, if not remembrance,
is present in the eyes of a child
holding his mother’s hand
and in the other a picture
of yet another soldier lost in
Afghanistan.
*1 Vietnam War
*2 Afghan War
