Your Favourite Poem

[summerisle]

Yesterday was the 57th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster. Spike Milligan wrote a poem about it.

 

[summerisle]

 

[kev]

Time for this again

This is a song lyric rather than a 'poem' but it's very apt for today (and tomorrow)

NOVEMBER 12th (Joe Solo)


My name is Private Joe Carpenter
of the 51st Rifles in France
I'm here to pick up the pieces of people
They left when the army advanced
The rats here grew fat on the flesh of my comrades
Rotting out in No Man's Land
Now I'm trying to give some poor bugger his name back
When all I can find is his hand

On November 11th they rang out the bells
The crowds hit the streets as they silenced the shells
I bet old Lloyd George is proud of himself
But he's not digging graves on November the 12th

My brother died up in Wipers last winter
He’d signed up as soon as he could
Now bits of his body lay buried forever
In ten foot of Passchendaele mud
There is no graveside my mother can mourn at
As she cries out into the night
She says his death was a message from Heaven
That God never meant us to fight

November 11th they rang out the bells
And crowds hit the streets as they silenced the shells
And I bet old Lloyd George is proud of himself
But then he’s not digging graves on November the 12th

I was digging some place when I come face to face
With two unblinking eyes staring back
It give me a fright, by some trick of the light
Hell, I swear that it looked like our Jack
But it was some German boy barely sixteen
I stood there and whispered a prayer
Said: “You were never really my enemy son,
No he’s sat in some office somewhere”.

November 11th they rang out the bells
And crowds hit the streets as they silenced the shells
And I hope all warmongers rot down in Hell
And I’d make ‘em dig graves on November the 12th

 

[summerisle]

Pithy.

 

[perth_blue]

Ip dip
Dog ****
You are not it.

 

[TimHowardsBeardJuice]

I felt like I’d been punched the first time I read this.

 

[TimHowardsBeardJuice]

But then I read this one.

 

[Kurt.]

With the weight of the people upon you
A burden you chose to accept
Surrounding yourself with ineptness
Simply highlights that you are inept
No vision, no plan, no direction
To the 70’s you’re taking us back
A legacy for which you’ll be remembered
You soppy wet blanket Sunak

W. Wordsworth

 

[Rita_Poon]

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.