A poem for my Pictures and Poetry Challenge (that has already changed its name…)
Added to the dverse open link night.
The dew lies glistening on the grass,
And through the trees the white stone gleaming,
Through the trees let morning pass
In gold and silver half light streaming,
While on the hill the bones lie dreaming.
Dead on the ridge that’s grown again
With green and forest where walkers go,
Dead in the mud and bitter cold rain,
Tangled in wire and buried in snow,
We built them all crosses, their ghosts below.
They’re quiet the places ringed in stone,
And hid behind hedges where blackbird sings,
They’re quiet the men who lie all alone,
In their rank upon rank. No comfort brings
The spring, flown like geese on their northbound wings.
The last line really intrigues me.
Spring usually brings us comfort after the winter, but when you’re dead the comfort is as fleeting as those first spring days heralded by the geese.
So true, Jane! So we have to stay alive.
Yes, if we can!
Yes, we can, Jane! We have to do so much things, in the future.
I hope the European countries realise how bad it is to be totally reliant on China. We spend all our time bickering about sovereignty and all the time we are vassals of China.
We are not vassals, Jane! In my meaning our noble politicans tried to make a lot of money, outside the view of the citizens. Therefore you have to find another country, where you can create new businesses, transfer the patents, and do whatever you want, outside your own country, and far away from law. 😉
Whatever. Let the Germans carry on trading with them but let the rest of us get our own essential requirements home produced.
You never have seen the label on the EU? Made by Germany” Lol But we can trust in Macron. There is a lifelong friendship between France and Germany. 😉
It’s either be friends or murder one another.
😉 Yes, seems the way of normality between states.
Perhaps this virus is the last chance not to be taken over by China. At least they would do, because our politicans are not as intelligent as the Chinese.
I doubt it though. As you say, too many business interests are tied up with the Chinese. We won’t accept to consume less junk either.
Communists are not businessmen, Jane!
The last 20 years of highly valuable patents from companies such as Braun, AEG, Philips, Miele, etc. have disappeared from Germany to China. Do you not believe that these trademarks and patents have been left to the Chinese? No, companies have been set up there, only small parts are produced in Europe, and the money they earn is deposited far outside the eurozone.
China isn’t Communist it’s state capitalist so it welcomes thriving foreign businesses and has structured its own economy on the same lines but with the added possibility of forcing people to work for them. Capitalists in western democracies would love to have the same possibilities.
There are similarities, indeed. But i think its once again communism in China. Not whats said by Marx, more what done by dictatorship. We can call it “real practizised communism”. 🙂 Similar to the feudalism given in the past of Europe, from the Roman Catholic Church and the upcoming nobility, based on the “Theory of the two swords”.. Copyrighted by the Roman Catholic Church.
It would now be scientifically necessary to ask, whether this “Theory of the two swords” had not been the first instruction to set up a state administrative system. Lol
They’re all the same when you scrape off the veneer. They all involve the manipulation of the many for the benefit of the few.
So true, Jane! Its a sad system established in the past.
It worked then, it works now.
By the way: My own father did the same to his family. He died in 2016, and i am on the way bringing back all the money he earned, on base of our family assets, Sorry “he had stolen in the past”. ;-(
In what way ‘stolen’?
Transferd into other European countries. With the help of Bavarian politicans. But now i found the documents. 😉
Well, good luck. What will you do with his assets if you find they are dodgy?
Thank you, Jane! Well, it is our money that has been withheld from us for more than 20 years. Increased by shady actions. I have to see how I can solve this, morally integer.
Yes, try to think of what it means rather than what it can buy.
Be sure, i will do, Jane! There was so much sadness, the last years. I am currently leading the first of several damages lawsuits. I am not going to give anything to those responsible here.
I do hope you get this sorted out. It’s been going on too long. But that’s how lawyers earn their money, isn’t it?
So true, Jane! The first law suit is going on since last October. I had to wait so long for getting all helpful information first. Felt like James Bond gathering all these documents. 😉
That’s no time. If you have all your documents though, maybe there won’t be too many hitches.
Now, it seems i have the most of the documents. Will begin to give them a structure first.
We never thought about his cooperation with questionable Bavarian politicans, in trading weapons too. But now we will enlighten.
Best thing would be to offer them to a charity that helps the victims if it was arms trading.
Sure. Certainly the part that was acquired by these bad things. You just can’t accept things like that.
No, it’s the same as sanctioning it.
I will write a thriller about this, and i hope you will help to translate into the English and French.language. Why not earning money with the story itself too?
Good idea. You’d have to do a rough translation into English and I could try and tidy it up.
Yes, these are my thoughts, because in English there are much much interested readers, in the Upper Class too. 😉
All you have to do is write it then 🙂
I am on the way to do. Thank you, and best wishes, Michael
🙂
🙂 Writing law suits is much more easier, than writing a novel, or a thriller.
Than writing a good novel. I suspect writing a really bad thriller is pretty easy 🙂
Dont bring so much fear to me, Jane! 😉
🙂
🙂
Nice lines: “In gold and silver half light streaming,
While on the hill the bones lie dreaming.”
Thank you, Frank 🙂
I am in alignment with Frank. Those lines spoke to me also.
Thank you! It’s hard not to empathise with the words of Francis Ledwidge.
Great rhymes in this poem, Jane, and powerful imagery. It ends beautifully.
Thanks Kim. It’s a poem that only took a few minutes to write. Somehow it was all there. I used to live practically on the Chemin des Dames and there were war cemeteries everywhere. There was a German cemetery looked down on the supermarket, you could count the white crosses while you were unloading the supermarket cart. I got so depressed there.
Gorgeous phrasing in this one, Jane! 💝 I love; “They’re quiet the places ringed in stone.”
Thank you!
This is so powerful. My father is buried in such a place, bless him.
Thank you. That part of the world is so full of war cemeteries, some of them tiny and intimate, there is a permanent hush over the countryside. So very sad.
Beautiful rhymes and lyrical verse–despite the subject (as we were discussing earlier). The photo makes me think of that movie you like of WWI where the screen keeps moving out to show more graves.
Thank you. Yes, the rows of crosses has that optical effect, like a moving wave. They are such sad places.
Yes.
“We built them all crosses, their ghosts below.” grabbed me. We have veteran’s cemeteries here that go back to WWI. It is haunting to walk about in any pioneer cemetery.
Most of them are just names, there’s nothing in the grave, nothing was recovered to put in them.
This is stunning work. Spring returns, but the dead have no comfort in it. They are ringed in stone, as you say, hedged away from verdant things. Hopefully, the dead are honored, though the meaning would not be for them. it has to be for us. Maybe we’ll learn something apt and good.
Thank you. Crosses and such in cemeteries are supposed to be a way of remembering, but nobody visits these cemeteries far from home. There are few true graves anyway just names above an empty bit of earth. Most of the dead in the Great War were never recovered, or not enough of them, to bury. They are the great forgotten individuals amongst the mass of those we ‘remember’.
❤ We built them crosses, their bones below indeed.
Lovely one Jane, poignant and sad, but somehow what I needed today (it's been a hideous pain day, and I'm about to go lie down to see if it will pass.) So glad to be reading your poetry (I've been lax on it, but you know the backstory behind all that…)
Thank you, and I’m sorry you’ve had a bad day. I had hoped that was all under control now. Do you have the same medication?
I didn’t see your poem but I didn’t post until late last night and there were already about 70 in the comments section.
It was very late when I posted too, Jane! Here’s the link for you, so you don’t need to hunt so far for it. I’ll post the link for you every day, then you won’t need to search!
https://shukuen.blogspot.com/2020/04/glopowrimo-2020-day-2-geography-of.html
Thank you! Nobody can read all the poems. I’m so sorry you have such pain. Can’t they operate?
Jane, it’s more there’s nothing for them to operate on.
They have no idea what’s wrong, because all the scans come up negative and there’s not a single shred of pathology to look into. So right now all we can do is monitor it, and if it escalates then we try to manage and test more. Things dialled down about 2 years ago, but they’re escalating again – then again I have a few more resources to manage the pain with, so it isn’t hopeless but it really makes it hard to work on days like today when I have deadlines due everywhere and barely the energy to sit up.
It sounds scary and you sound very brave and upbeat about it. Keep the poems coming if you can.
It’s a bit scary yeah…but for now I’m just ploughing through life as it comes. When the pain hits, it hits hard, but it’s still possible to work through it after it eases up so…fingers crossed somehow it will eventually sort itself out! Yes, will definitely poem once I get done with the million things that piled up today…augh!
Keep your priorities straight. Not aggravating the pain bogey is number one!
There is no glory in war.
The pattern made by the crosses is like a knife to the heart, as is the repetition of the word dead in the second stanza. (K)
If those little cemeteries dotted all over the hills of that region were ever visited I’d be surprised. Too far away for anyone. So many. Not surprising they gave up the pretence that there was anything to bury, or that there was sufficient spare farmland to do it, and built massive monuments instead with thousands and thousands of name carved into them. 54000 on the Menin Gate at Ypres. Terrifying and so very sad.
Thanks for this lovely melancholy piece – and the photo. Looking at the casualties from the war in this area – the numbers are staggering – and as you say above so very sad.
I’m glad you like it, Peter. War poems tend to be about the mud and death, not many about fields and blossom and cows. Makes it all the more poignant maybe.