Hi everyone,
Hope you are having a great autumn/spring! I had my Halloween post all mapped out neat in my head when I signed up,
but then this whole month's been beyond hectic so I never got around to
actually putting it down. Now I’m
probably at the party in the wrong costume! :)
Anyways, I got sent the famous poem, this one here which does the rounds every year about this time, and reading it
again prompted a couple of my own. I am sharing them here because well, Halloween also
coincides with the El Alamein battle. October/November is always a vaguely poignant time.
Happy Halloween, Happy Autumn/Spring, and Happy Diwali, whatever you are
celebrating! Take your pick of lanterns and lamps, and party!
Here's my take on
I.
Maybe they still blow, vivid symbols; did he
mean the quarrel to be endless? Does
the poppy
only rain blows and mustn’t bloom? Nothing’s seen
between the lines here, except clean
headstones, different wars, same end, same cemetery.
A strange knot in the guts, haunting futility
in gaunt sky and earth, twisting tortured sea;
is anyone an adult at eighteen?
Maybe.
Things talked over, twiddled hypocrisy
morphs the same conflicts, the inequality,
the son-like forefathers, the graveyard scene.
No poppies bloom in El Alamein
no screens between the stones and me.
Maybe.
II.
It’s not the multitudes. It’s the years
carved on headstones, many a mere
eighteen apart, and some blank, unknown.
Some faraway mother’s Jhandu or John
lying unmarked in the desert here.
Did they still think that they could hear
the dead son’s voice - that he was near -
coming awake from a dream at dawn?
It’s not the multitudes.
Did they tend to forget and still clear
a place, laid meals sometimes, and then veer
back into the truth, sigh and move on?
Now decades ago, the mothers too are gone
to join their sons at the last frontier.
It’s not the multitudes.
