- Non-Erotic Poetry
- Doomed Youth
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Click hereA poppy or a paper crane
A pretty thing
A pleasant sight
To hide the bitter past
No trench line nor atomic bomb
No sombre truth
No ugly shame
Upon remembrance hour
A picnic and a holiday
A lesson lost
Lest we forget?
The warning goes unheard
- COMMENTS
KOLKOREabout 15 years agoCount me among those who were touched; touched and moved by your memorial poem. I don't know if you have to be one of the unlucky-lucky ones who came from similar places to be touched that way. I would not necessarily presume so. But the fact is that I have. It just happens to be a personal fact. Just a fact. The touch which moved me felt more like a burn. Obviously not that pleasnnt, mostly pain I guess. But With the reference to beauty to lives (even lost), I can look around somewhat more alive, perhaps at this moment I remeber more what I still have.
oggbashanabout 16 years agoThough short, this poem reminded me of so many things I shouldn't forget. (Including the Anzacs sacrificed at Gallipoli)
Og
jomarover 16 years agoNot sure why my comment didn't post earlier. Have you heard "Thousand Cranes" by Hiroshima on their "East" CD? Very moving, like your poem.
Varian Pover 16 years agoWith simple language you succeed in conveying a lot, because your images so perfectly draw on intense, complex, and immediately-accessible human experience.
drksideofthemoonover 16 years agoThe beauty of poetry is that so much can be said in so few words. This is what you have accomplished with your poem. To me, it was a very moving, and sobering piece of work, and reminded me a bit of "In Flanders Field".
Well done.
WhiteWave48over 16 years agoThis poem appeals to me a great deal. It's anti-war message is expressed simply in images that may be familiar to many but are in no way trite in the context of this poem. These images have powerful connotations along with their visual appeal, highlighting the irony of the pretty things we use in our ceremonial remembrance of ugly wars, such as the Flanders poppy, the 1,000 Japanese paper cranes (origami birds) that children make to remember Hiroshima.
Each stanza is beautifully structured with a steady rhythm that seems to build the pace for the reader and therefore the intensity of the message.
I particularly like the way you used sound in each stanza to reflect the change of subject there, for example, the light 'p' sounds represented the poppies and the paper cranes, and then you moved on to the heavier, liquid sounds of the assonance in 'bomb' and 'sombre'.
Your decision to avoid punctuation and rhyme was an advantage in this poem, as you placed your design features within the pattern of syllables and line lengths, and also in the other poetic devices used within each stanza.
