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.
The attribution for the poem, above, goes to John McCrae. The poem, “In Flanders Field”, became popular during WWI as a recruitment tool. For a different perspective…
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
If “In Flanders Fields” was used for imperialist war propaganda, then the culture of imperialism has deteriorated significantly. Maybe fighting for Halliburton (now) is different, in some unfathomable way, from fighting for JP Morgan (World War 1). Poets who love imperialism need to sit down together and figure out how to solve this problem, I guess.
Unless you count this song, I can’t think of any poem at all that has been used to promote the current never-ending Global War on Terror, let alone a poem as beautiful as “In Flanders Fields.” There have been some torture movies, like Zero Dark Thirty, and lots of TV shows promoting torture, but I can’t think of any poems.
I have talked to a number of US soldiers and veterans over the years, from all branches of the military, and somewhat to my surprise, I have yet to meet a single one who believes in the current war(s).
Maybe I’m wrong, but I believe that Eric started this thread in the spirit of remembrance, not as an avenue for protestation or anti-war sentiment. You two may need a thread of your own to vent your frustrations.
He started this thread with a poem. Poetry is notorious for being open to interpretation. Pueblo Unido and I both offered our respective interpretations, and I even went so far as to say it was a nice poem, so claiming that our remarks are off-topic, especially in the “Just Conversation and Introduce Yourself” section, seems a bit extreme to me!
Maybe I could have given it more context but I figured posting “In Flanders Fields” on November 11, with the Title “Lest we Forget” would have been context enough.
I probably should have attributed the poem to McCrea, but it is so ubiquitous (at least here in Canada) I didn’t feel it was necessary.
True it had been used in propaganda for fundraising and recruitment during the Great War, but in the nearly 100 years since then, the poem and the poppy have been symbols for remembrance.
If I wanted to start a thread to argue I would have done it on one of the other 364 days of the year but don’t mind the current discussion. The fastest way to get people to forget something is to prevent them from discussing it, so discuss away.
Maybe declaring a state of emergency would be a better idea. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about the calendar. That’s what the president of France just did. His approval rating normally hovers around 20%, but now he has the right to establish curfews, expand gun control, issue more search warrants and expand surveillance, and he says he will hire 10,000 new cops and give them more leeway to kill. He also proclaims the right to strip people of their citizenship if they are involved in terrorism or attacks on “the national interest,” whatever that is! Oh well, all these things already happened a long time ago in the US, and no state of emergency was ever declared.
We are definitely living in leaner and leaner times. Even the New York Unicycle Club, which has held its meetings at Grant’s Tomb ever since being ejected from Central Park, is being limited to smaller and smaller spaces by the tomb officers. A large (and growing) space around the Tomb, we are told, must remain unicycle-free, not because general Grant helped to smash slavery (silly me for even thinking that!) but because he became president.
the initial post/poem made me weep.
this one is not altogether exact:
I’s precisely because rating is low that the president is doing things against his feelings.
example: he knows that stripping people of citizenship will be rejected by supreme judicial authority. So it’s just an hollow announcement to satisfy right-leaning public opinion.
“leeway to kill” is an exageration. The rules of engagment are extremely strict:what was done is that “urban” police has now the same rules as “rural” gendarmerie.
this said I agree with the general idea that sorrow should not lead us towards liberty-crushing laws.
Well, in his speech Hollande made it pretty clear that the cops’ right to armed “self-defense” ("…la question de la légitime défense des policiers et des conditions dans lesquelles ils peuvent faire usage de leurs armes…") would be expanding.
As to what you say about Hollande’s personal feelings regarding the dictatorial measures he is calling for, well, people say similar things about Obama when I point out that he has expanded nearly all of George W. Bush’s antidemocratic policies, from doubling the number of names on the secret no-fly list, to doubling the number of Border Patrol agents, to doubling the size of the torture center at Bagram Air Base, to doubling the number of whistle blower prosecutions of all previous US presidents combined. At a certain point, a president who is responsible for the destruction of several different countries (Libya, Syria, Yemen, parts of Ukraine, etc) must be taken at face value, even if he comes across as a nice guy.
I’m trying to figure out what a former President, who’s now dead, has against unicycles. Does the tomb now have crowds of people milling about outside, who need more unicycle-free space? Or are they just concerned about liability, which is, unfortunatly, usually a valid concern?
No, liability was never cited as a concern, or they would have evicted us from the area completely. I have also never seen a large crowd there, and the few people who do drop by are usually pleasantly surprised to see us.
The tomb cops, based on their lectures, seem to feel that the Tomb deserves a level of respect and dignity so profound that it cannot adequately be expressed on one wheel. “This is a mausoleum, not a playground,” one of them said.
Oh well, at least they seem to have reduced the amount of Confederate memorabilia for sale at the gift shop! Apparently there was some opposition, among New York’s ruling elite, to even having Grant’s Tomb be located in the city. During the Civil War, many influential New York Democrats, including Fernando Wood, the mayor, supported the Confederacy. New York City was also one of the last places in the North to abolish slavery, and more New York City households owned slaves than any other Northern location I’ve ever heard of.
I think the crackdown on unicycling (and skateboarding) at Grant’s Tomb is just one more expression of the fact that, for inequality to continue growing, life has to become more and more regimented…
this Remembrance Day thread was started in honor of those who sacrificed in foreign wars and in honor of the November 11th armistice. Thanks to them and thanks to Eric for starting the thread.
No. Who is he? That movie was some sort of light-hearted patriotic comedy, as I recall, but I saw it a very long time ago and don’t remember it too well.
