Print

---

Remembrance Day

Over the sounds of commerce the 'Last Post',
   sang out, and every person moving in the mall
stopped and fell silent; as silent as the host
   of long dead men we honoured with this call,
this song of pride and pain, unending sorrow,
   of prices paid before the cost was known;
of hope that we won't need to pay tomorrow
   the price our fathers paid in blood and bone.
The bugle dies, we stand in humbled silence,
   each with our thoughts, our memories, our wars,
our dreams of lives in which there is no violence,
   no need to sell our souls to settle scores;
and then once more we hear the bugle sing,
   and, as the dead draw back, the checkouts ring.

© Dennis Greene 1999