Image from here High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of EarthAnd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthof sun-split clouds,-and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of-wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager […]
Rememberance Day. 2020 — willowdot21
Veterans For Peace UK 1 h · BREAKING THE SILENCEThe two minutes’ silence on Armistice Day was first interrupted in 1920 by none other than 10,000 veterans, impoverished, starving & betrayed by a government & a capitalist system that erased their sacrifice for profit. They’d gathered in Victoria Street, parallel with Whitehall. When the new Cenotaph was […]
Veterans For Peace UK — Opher’s World
*Here is another aspect of the end of WW1 — the ‘German Revolution‘.
Emphatic red blooms
Symbols of slaughter and hope
So never again
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Sir Edwin Lutyens’ wonderful War Memorial to the local fallen of the Great War in the grounds of Ayscoughfee Hall, Spalding.
It may be one of his lesser known pieces of architecture, a ‘hidden gem’ that should be appreciated far more.
A touching, moving churchyard memorial to some of the war dead of 1914 – 1918.
Soon after the conflict some viewed WW1 as the war to end all wars. So when this memorial was erected who could have imagined such an amount of horror, suffering and loss ever being repeated again..?
words and pictures ©copyright rp 2016
Safe Distance
Another old soldier who never speaks.
Sitting stiffly in braces and polished leather,
his medals left in bric-a-brac drawers
with sovereigns and half crowns,
concealing the nugget –
the tale worth telling from this safe distance.
A story of a corporal who carried
a limp subaltern from no man’s land
to safety through a Belgian quagmire.
Lieutenant Turnbull was a right bastard,
but no point in resentment or fear
when a bullet could tear through your head
at any time. Simply had to do it and get on.
His blank eyes, though still blue,
cannot disguise the bare brown soul,
like the pounded landscape, the kit bag
he carries around everywhere.
Until the lights go out.
© copyright df barker 2012
First published in poetry collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, available at amazon.com
