On this pellucid ANZAC eve
we who have been spared
to grow old
count our rivers and our trees
as blessings
for those not reprieved,
whose days were numbered
as statistics
or as smoke encrypted wreaths.
Gazing at the sky's
resounding clarion that hails the moon,
we see it too for those who bled,
not only on the Sestos shore,
torchlit to the lee of Troy,
and in bucolic fields of France,
but here, defending
what was theirs from those
who would transgress.
We who have survived them
beyond outrage,
beyond innocence,
to gaze on lazy rivers
on a lambent azure afternoon,
look long,
but never longingly enough
to honour those who rest
uneasily, in narrow
and untimely beds,
lest we forget.
24.04.08
ANZAC eve
More than skin deep
© Copyright: Jena Woodhouse, 2008
Свидетельство о публикации №108042401472
Свидетельство о публикации №108042401472
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Jena,
Uniquely we celebrate the day of their major defeat, not victory, as the main military remembrance holiday...
Thank you very much for your verses.
Геннадий Казакевич 28.04.2008 08:41 • Заявить о нарушении
Uniquely we celebrate the day of their major defeat, not victory, as the main military remembrance holiday...
Thank you very much for your verses.
Геннадий Казакевич 28.04.2008 08:41 • Заявить о нарушении
Yes, Gennadi, so we do. We often do things differently in this country. But I think it is neither victory nor defeat, but valour and sacrifice that we celebrate on ANZAC Day. This is why it is meaningful and moving, and captures the heart of a nation, beyond the parameters of matters military. The fact that the ANZACS were mostly volunteers (with the exception of commissioned officers), lends even greater poignancy to their willingness to offer their lives for the sake of their country. Their response to the call to arms was generous and genuine. They were free spirits serving in the name of freedom. Perhaps this sounds as if I romanticise, but I visited the Gallipoli battlefields several times in the 1980s (as well as Troy, with whose legendary conflict the Gallipoli campaign has sometimes been compared), and the experience of being in the presence of so many unfinished lives has left a profound impression on me. War is an abomination, but the grace to volunteer one's life in the cause of one's country and the defence of liberty transcends politics, I believe.
'Honour to those who in the life they lead
define and guard a Thermopylae...'
Thank you for your kind words.
Regards, as ever,
Jena Woodhouse 28.04.2008 09:51 Заявить о нарушении
'Honour to those who in the life they lead
define and guard a Thermopylae...'
Thank you for your kind words.
Regards, as ever,
Jena Woodhouse 28.04.2008 09:51 Заявить о нарушении