FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.

"Where is Flanders?" was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.

"Where is Flanders?" was asked.
And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.

A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes,
On a land of salt grass and dunes, sand-swept with a sea-breath on it:
This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet,
The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands,
And the raw-***** plowmen took horses with long shanks
Out in the dawn to the sea-breath.

Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills,
Slow-circling windmill arms turning north or west,
Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds,
So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girl
Washing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window.

IN FLANDERS FIELDS THE POPPIES BLOW*

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Here my comrades and I are laden
We fought for King and Country
Here we are---the fallen.

‘Be proud’, was the national proclamation
‘ You are the chosen’
We left home and our loved ones
Here we are—the ill-begotten.

Some of us  once upon glorious corridors
Of Cambridge and Oxford had trodden
The best and most fertile of young minds
Here we are—the forgotten.

How strong we then were, riding on the back of youth
Its dreams so sweet and resplendent
Rained by bullets in the battlefield
Here we are---death has spoken.

Pro patria gloria, dulcis pro patria mori
(Never mind if our hearts were cruel and rotten
We must **** all enemies  over the fence)
Here we are---the terrible  who were chosen.


Were we born to destroy and mutilate?
But in the battle-front ---all we loved and espoused had been stolen  
Buried in dark pits of hate and revenge
There we were----inhuman and despondent.

Those whom we slaughtered and maimed
Didn’t they like us once did hold dreams just as golden?
Weren’t they who happiness sought as we did?
Here we are—to bemoan all the precious from such that had been stolen.


In Flanders fields the poppies weep
For us who are far from home and have nowhere to return
With the wind’s nightly melancholic sighs whispering in our ears
Here we are----empty,  with dark sins upon us—for absolution is all we yearn.

• inspired by the opening line of John McCrae’s poem IN FLANDERS FIELDS   published in December 1915 (Flanders is in Belgium where a million died or were maimed).

John McCrae (1872—1918) was a Canadian doctor who joined the army as a gunner but later transferred to the medical service.
IN 1918 he was made consultant to all the British armies in France
but died of pneumonia before taking up the appointment.

[After Flanders Fields, by Major John McCrae, 1915]

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields,
the beaches of France,
Palestine groves,
Malaya's tropics,
Korean mountains,
Egypt's deserts,
Cyprus' beaches,
Borneo's forests,
Aden's marshes,
Falkland's heaths,
Balkan's tundra,
Afganistan bush,
Iraqi highlands,
[Keep list open....]