Remembrance

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow ..." John McCrae

Much discussion this week about the nature of "remembrance" - a lot of it centering on the ceramic poppies at the Tower of London. Are they a fitting memorial to a generation of "glorious dead" or simply a sanitized, sentimental representation of the British losses in a conflict that started a century ago, a conflict that would be better recalled with graphic images of the horror of those four long years? Do they downplay the universal nature of loss and suffering, ignoring the millions from other nations who died both as combatants and civilians?  Views are strongly held on both sides of the debate.

On Friday evening (November 14th) at DeepSpace in Charlton Kings here in Cheltenham poetry will be read and performed by a variety of local poets looking at all angles of remembrance and at the reality of wars past and present. Led by Jennie Farley, Eley Furrell and David Clarke, it should be a thought-provoking evening. I shall be reading the wonderful poem written by the American Sara Teasdale in 1917, "There Will Come Soft Rains"; to me it expresses a salutary truth which we would all do well to ponder.

"There Will Come Soft Rains"

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild-plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale

If you are free on Friday evening, do please join us. We'd love to see you there.