UBC Press Remembers the Men and Women Who Gave Their Lives in Service to Canada
Corn Poppy (Papaver rhoeas) (GFDL Image)
UBC Press Remembers: Remembrance Day falls on November 11th as a commemoration to Canadians who died in service to this country. The first Remembrance Day was conducted throughout the Commonwealth in 1919. Originally called Armistice Day, it recognized the end of the First World War on Monday, November 11th, 1918, at 11 a.m.: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The poppy is the symbol of Remembrance Day.
Remembrance I Wind curls the pennants at the cenotaph
A fitful wind
It pokes along the ranks of fresh-cheeked soldiers
Tugs at the ribbons of veterans
And comes to fret
Around the paper poppy on my breast
Seeming curious why one warrior stands so silently apart
Wind
Wreath-scented
In a peaceful land
Mellow in the autumn air
Yesterday another wind spoke other ways
Not of you my land
The living
The hope of the living
The vague hushed fragrances of memory
But of the certain dead
And those who heard them at Bernieres
And Caen
And Anthem
As they fell
Who have smelled the smell of death?
Who have heard exploding steel expend itself in flesh?
Who have felt primeval fear grind pride into the dust
Or the muck
Writhing and creeping as we have writhed and crept?
Who torn Earth with fainting fingers
In retreat of self and the sudden raking guns?
So far from all of this!
The wind of yesterday engraved
A harsher requiem
In us
More than a remembering for us
For us a not forgetting
A solitude that some winds bring
On quiet days
On peaceful days
On undefended shores of night
A requiem
- Author Unknown
Reference
UBC Press 2009 Military and Security Studies Catalogue & Studies in Canadian Military History Series
The Association of Canadian University Presses / Association des Presses Universitaires Canadiennes
