The memory of poppies

[draconis]

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, nineteen hundred and eighteen... precisely ninety years ago.

In honor of those who have sacrificed so much, in that war and all the others before and since, I humbly offer this small haiku, along with the much more polished "In Flanders Fields"


Poppies remember
The torch the dead have thrown us.
Is it still held high?



In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.