Remembrance Day · Saturday, 11 November 2028

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under an overcast November sky: the three lines of the inscription, HERE LIES AN AMERICAN, KNOWN TO GOD AND TO HIS OWN, BROUGHT HOME FOR ALL THOSE WHO WERE NOT, cut in weathered white marble with a crack across it, and a single red paper poppy laid on the step at its foot.
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington. Its third line, in the hand of Ernest III, 1921, is the Act of Remembrance, said together at the end of every service on the Eleventh.

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.

Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.

Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.

My subject is War, and the pity of War.

The Poetry is in the pity.

Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.

Wilfred Owen, from the preface to his poems, 1918.

In Flanders Fields

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.

John McCrae, 1915. Sung last at the Tomb on the Eleventh, before the silence.

At eleven o'clock, the silence.

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier