Eleven Eleven Eleven

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This poem came to me on the last Remembrance Day - 11th November 2013. Don't know where it came from but the words cut me up as I wrote them.

Eleven, Eleven, Eleven


Eleven, eleven, eleven, again
Tormented souls up in heaven
1918 - How time’s rolled on
With a whole generation gone.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day
Of the eleventh month each year people stay
2 minutes stopped from activity
Stand still and silent for all to see

Respect given to the long-dead, missing, fallen
In needless wars of attrition
Yet worldwide wars still rage on
Today our troops and civvies fall upon

Foreign soil and foreign lands
Killed and maimed by foreign hands
Their unselfish acts never cease
In helping bring this world to peace

Some youth look on with empty eyes
Cannot understand people’s sighs
Don’t want to know what they can’t see
At things that happened in history

The years roll on – but things don’t change
Respect for these heroes is not strange
These people battle universal strife
Willingly lay down their life

We hear Kipling’s words “Lest we Forget”
But do we understand our eternal debt?
No greater love is more than this
They give their lives for our own bliss 

Rest well you battle weary souls
Whose souls and lives will ne’er grow old
Rejoice each year again and again
That your sacrifice was not in vain

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