Remembrance Sunday 2010
I remember the mothers The sisters, the wives, the daughters And ... oh yes ...
The girlfriends.
Certainly the girlfriends
left alone with no claim
(not even the same name)
I remember their deserts of waiting
Their oceans of wondering if,
When the bloody tide runs out
Their love will cradle
Pale bleached bones
Crumbling to dust
I know their hearts were ripped out
And taken to the front
Their lives frozen.
I know they gestured days away – being brave
I know they knew that without
blood, scars, screaming corpses
chests of medals and memorials
their suffering was nothing
And such suffering is only ever
Unsung
I lay my wreaths
Shed my tears
Sing my hymns
For this other battlefield
Where silence rewards the loyalty
Where nothing records the humanity
keeping homes,towns, cities sane
Until the butchery peters out
As it always does,
Until the screaming dies with
No more appetite to throw
Young lives on the pyre of hatred,
Until those still breathing turn for home
Knowing love will be waiting
I remember the spoils The ranks of those raped with a savagery reserved for Female flesh punished as the enemy Women and children made HIV positive denied drugs ... cast out ... reviled
Worse than Unsung
Blamed
They count ... they certainly count Though their medal is shame And their reward death
I sing of them
I remember
I remember women laying wreaths or
Polishing stones in Northern France
Old women who’d waited in vain for
lovers to fill them with laughter
Their wombs with life
I remember the armies of unloved women everywhere
Their aging beauty the butt of jokes
Girlfriend
Made spinster
Made teacher
Not even a widow.
I sing too of the wars in our streets
our homes… our hearts.
I wear my poppy for them all
I stand in church and listen
To the silence
as those that count are remembered
My straight back bearing witness,
To the never mentioned,
the always forgotten
the forever unsung
I remember them all.
After attending Remembrance Sunday service on Lismore 2010
