AD INFINITUN
The moat at the Tower of London
has become like a river of poppy-red blood.
Look again, closer, because
the blood of beheaded queens runs deep. +
A king, two young princes, traitors
the innocent, nonconformists all slaughtered.
Blood never dries on the hands of a king.
It drips from the hands of leaders
who send us to war, then lay wreaths.
Those not born before World Wars
commemorate the hundredth year of the
Great War by planting ceramic poppies.
Spilt blood has seeped into foreign fields
on home ground, on no-man’s land
on desert sands, on frozen waste.
It has splattered across skies, coloured seas.
As flowers keep growing
blood shed from the fallen flows on;
A tidal bore on the Thames.
Maureen Sutton
09 11 20
COPYRIGHT MAUREEN SUTTON 09 11 20
The moat at the Tower of London
has become like a river of poppy-red blood.
Look again, closer, because
the blood of beheaded queens runs deep. +
A king, two young princes, traitors
the innocent, nonconformists all slaughtered.
Blood never dries on the hands of a king.
It drips from the hands of leaders
who send us to war, then lay wreaths.
Those not born before World Wars
commemorate the hundredth year of the
Great War by planting ceramic poppies.
Spilt blood has seeped into foreign fields
on home ground, on no-man’s land
on desert sands, on frozen waste.
It has splattered across skies, coloured seas.
As flowers keep growing
blood shed from the fallen flows on;
A tidal bore on the Thames.
Maureen Sutton
09 11 20
COPYRIGHT MAUREEN SUTTON 09 11 20
Hi Maureen. A remarkable poem. You make us rethink what the installation at the Tower can mean. Most of us are overwhelmed by the emotion of it all. You make us think of the irony involved. The responsiblities of the powerful in sending people to war…..
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