Every year, on the nearest Sunday to November 11, silence is observed nationally to honour the dead of 2 World wars. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is how it's recalled.
I heard this poem on the radio yesterday. It seemed very real somehow.
A lady who?s over eighty now
Remembers traffic used to slow
And stop on the street, when she was a girl,
And pedestrians halt on the pavement so
The world, it seemed, stood still to recall
The husbands, fiancés, precious ones
Never to see or to hug again,
Brothers and uncles, fathers and sons.
Still those old eyes brim with pain
At menfolk not come back again.
A mother in the playground here
Thinks of her eldest, far away.
She hasn?t seen him half a year
Although he ?phoned her yesterday.
Remember the way he buttons his cuffs.
Remember the way he chews his toast.
Remember the curls in the nape of his neck
And wonder if this will be his last post.
And tell me the point of Remembrance Day
When we let them go the same old way.
Englishman.