It is Poetry Friday and it is also Remembrance Day.

If you have ever attended a Remembrance Day service or, if you’re Australian, an ANZAC Service, you will have heard, and perhaps even recited these words, as the Ode of Remembrance:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them…

But you may not have realised these words come from a much longer poem, beautiful and poignant in its entirety. So, for today, I give you the full poem, read  as it should be read by  Sir John Gielgud:

 

I also wanted to share the war poem that had a profound impact on me as a teenager – The Ball Turret Gunner – shocking, brief and utterly devastating – but because it is not in the public domain, I’ll just share a link to where it is shared with permission. That last line is shocking, which is why it is so very powerful.

This Remembrance Day I’ll be thinking of those who have fought and died, but also of all those around the world who are still experiencing war – as participants or as innocent victims. And I’ll keep hoping that one day peace can be  a real, enduring thing.

Today’s Poetry Friday Roundup will be hosted by Buffy