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Pondering; On Remebrance Day ...
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LEST WE FORGET.
REMEMBRANCE DAY.
REMEMBRANCE DAY.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young girls gone?
Taken husbands every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
** Where have all the flowers gone? **
Words and music by Pete Seeger
Perhaps even more to the point, why don't we ever learn?
posted by Richard at Saturday, November 11, 2006
9 Comments:
"MCMXIV"
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheats' restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)
Some have learned. Many, the hard way. Some of us always knew better. Call it what you want - instinctively\morally\obviously.
xxx has left a new comment on your post "Pondering; On Remebrance Day ...":
They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.
www.wewillrememberthem.co.uk/
The primary reason is that "we" don't control the culture we are reared in. And so like fish born in water who are totally unaware of water, "we" are totally unaware of the exploitative and divisive nature of our culture.
Even if the general populace was aware enough to throw out their televisions, "we" would have a "fighting chance" (so to speak!)
And perhaps those that go to church regularly could stay home on Sunday and read (perhaps aloud) the Gospels instead.
It would be a great start.
While I'm dreaming......
Everybody could read the poetry of Wilfred Owen (definitely aloud)
And politicians would have to sit a yearly exam on the John Stuart Mill classic "On Liberty".
Then again, if everybody understood how Banking and Bankers worked, poverty and fighting would stop tomorrow.
Damn good question, Richard. So obvious yet so little asked.
Thanks, Richard.
Beautiful collection of photos. So appropriate.
I'll always remember Remembrance Services as a young child in England with the poppies falling. I remember the tales of returning relatives who held the beach at Dunkirk with the Irish Guards and neighbours from the Burma campaign. I grew up, as most of my generation, on World War II films. As an adult I cannot stomach then - the sheer waste of young life tears me apart. We have returning Iraqi vets., in my local town with hideous injuries and quite truthfully they should have been allowed to die. I went to Anzac Day dawn services in Australia earlier this year with my nieces and nephew which were very moving but I don't think I will ever forget the very elderly man in front of me who sobbed the whole way through. The powers that be are truly quick to spill the blood of our youth - may they rot in hell!
It is bad enough that there are all those white crosses (or should I say the need for all tos white crosses) but seeing them arrayed in perfectly straight lines seems to me the final indignity imposed on them by the machine-like mind that caused it all in the first place.
AMEN.
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