Katherine Braithwaite Poet Blank verse

Why Were the Poppies

We have to be breathing right to hear it,
the silence in which all song arises;
we have to be breathing slow
and gentle
and not to be staring angrily at the world.

We have to be breathing right to feel it,
the tenderness in which we are held by nature.
We have to be breathing quiet
and soft
and to be looking receptively,without desire.

We have to be breathing right to recall it
the music we heard when there was silence.
We have to be being breathed
by the world
We have to be part of the whole..

and so,we forget  it as we are pounded
by noise of radios and TVs
 by people talking loudly on cell phones
by the green fields and river
by the secret heron
by the coots nest
by the daisies

When I am dying I shall think,
Why was I not breathing right?
Why was I scarcely breathing?
Why did I forget those moments?
Why did I not live more deeply?
Why did i not sing more sweetly?
Why did I nor love more dearly?
Why did i not listen more carefully?

Why did I not sing more sweetly?
why did I not see more completely?

Why don't we talk more gently?
Why don't we look more intently?

Why were the poppies growing so wildly?
Why were the battlefields growing nightly?
Why did we murder  men so lightly?
Why did we not love more rightly?
Why are the poppies  covering the soil  so  politely?
When did the young  soldiers   leave so frightfully?

Why are we not here  more quietly?

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