Armistice Day

There seemed to be more
old-enough men
in the café than usual,
eating their set, roast lunches.

Had they just stood,
straight-backed,
cold-cheeked,
by the memorial,
as the Last Post soared above
the wreaths of remembered blood?

Had they dropped bombs
over Dresden?
Had they waited
with salt-wet boots
for the last boat at Dunkirk?
Had they marched under “Arbeit macht frei”,
to find corpse/s [piles],
dead and alive?

“Did you?
Did you?”
I asked, unsaid.


12 November 2008


This was another exercise with Paula during our creative writing workshop, the day after Armistice Day. The poem describes what I'd felt at lunch in my local cafe the day before. What surprided me when I wrote the poem, was that I assumed I'd do something about the First World War, for which I have always felt a particular affinity, but this is what came out. She felt she'd like another verse, bringing it even more back to the present. Not sure if the concentration camp line shld be just "corpses", or "corpse piles". I also wonder if the whole thing shld be in the present tense...