The Sandbag Times Issue No: 45
The Veterans Magazine
The Veterans Magazine
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Poetry Corner<br />
On reaching the top of the hill I traced<br />
the inscriptions on the war memorial,<br />
leaned against it like a wishbone.<br />
<strong>The</strong> dove pulled freely against the sky,<br />
an ornamental stitch. I listened, hoping to hear<br />
your playground voice catching on the wind.<br />
By Mike Woods<br />
I am grateful to Pablo Snow, editor of <strong>The</strong> <strong>Sandbag</strong><br />
<strong>Times</strong> for the opportunity to write this section of the<br />
magazine. I am delighted to be able to include a<br />
poem by Jane Weir, one of the poets prescribed on<br />
the AQA GCSE syllabus in the section entitled<br />
‘Power and Conflict’. Her moving poem, ‘Poppies’<br />
appears below. It was commissioned by Carol Ann<br />
Duffy, the Poet Laureate as one of ten poems published<br />
in <strong>The</strong> Guardian newspaper in response to<br />
the conflict in Afghanistan. A film in which Jane<br />
talks about the genesis of the poem can be found<br />
here: https://youtu.be/r8QIcYdJPG0.<br />
POPPIES<br />
Jane Weir<br />
www.templarpoetry.com<br />
Three days before Armistice Sunday<br />
and poppies had already been placed<br />
on individual war graves. Before you left,<br />
I pinned one onto your lapel, crimped petals,<br />
spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade<br />
of yellow bias binding around your blazer.<br />
Sellotape bandaged around my hand,<br />
I rounded up as many white cat hairs<br />
as I could, smoothed down your shirt's<br />
upturned collar, steeled the softening<br />
of my face. I wanted to graze my nose<br />
across the tip of your nose, play at<br />
being Eskimos like we did when<br />
you were little. I resisted the impulse<br />
to run my fingers through the gelled<br />
blackthorns of your hair. All my words<br />
flattened, rolled, turned into felt,<br />
slowly melting. I was brave, as I walked<br />
with you, to the front door, threw<br />
it open, the world overflowing<br />
like a treasure chest. A split second<br />
and you were away, intoxicated.<br />
After you'd gone I went into your bedroom,<br />
released a song bird from its cage.<br />
Later a single dove flew from the pear tree,<br />
and this is where it has led me,<br />
skirting the church yard walls, my stomach busy<br />
making tucks, darts, pleats, hat-less, without<br />
a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.<br />
Alongside her poetry writing, Jane is a textiles<br />
designer. <strong>The</strong> thread of imagery associated with her<br />
close knowledge is reflected in her choice of words<br />
such as ‘bias’, ‘blockade’ and ‘felt’, all of them resonantly<br />
ambiguous. <strong>The</strong>y are developed in the fourth<br />
satanza to communicate the emotional respnse fo a<br />
mother to her son’s imminent departure, her worry<br />
being expressed as the ‘tucks, darts, pleats’ of her<br />
stomach.This poem is one of a triptych, the others<br />
being entitled ‘A Hank of Yellow Wool in a<br />
Landscape’ and ‘<strong>The</strong> Face’. In response to my asking<br />
if it would be possible to include the pom in <strong>The</strong><br />
<strong>Sandbag</strong> <strong>Times</strong>, Jane wrote “‘Poppies’ was inspired<br />
by a ramble up to the war memorial in Matlock and<br />
through the very graveyard mentioned in the poem<br />
with my lad as a small boy many years ago. It got<br />
me thinking about Sassoon’s poem, ‘Sick Leave’<br />
when he was hospitalised at Craiglockhartt suffering<br />
from shell shock. He reported seeing men from his<br />
platoon at the foot of his bed asking him what he<br />
doing and why was he not with them.”<br />
SICK LEAVE<br />
When I’m asleep, dreaming and lulled and warm,<br />
<strong>The</strong>y come, the homeless ones, the noiseless dead.<br />
While the dim charging breakers of the storm<br />
Bellow and drone and rumble overhead,<br />
Out of the gloom they gather about my bed.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y whisper to my heart; their thoughts are mine.<br />
“Why are you here with all your watches ended?<br />
From Ypres to Frise we sought you in the line.”<br />
In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;<br />
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain<br />
I think of the Battalion in the mud.<br />
“When are you going out to them again?<br />
Are they not still your brothers through our blood?”<br />
Siegried Sassoon<br />
Siegfried Sassoon formed a famous friendship with<br />
| 36 www.sandbagtimes.co.uk