I was sat at the desk at my new work place when an email flashed up on the screen of my phone saying ‘Request from the Today program’.
After a quick double take I opened it to find an invitation to discuss Kipling as a War poet on Radio 4. The interview went very well and I was delighted to be asked to write a piece for Radio 5 to be recited on the Sunday of Remembrance Week.
The recording can be found here on the BBC’s website. It’s at the bottom of the page.
In this silence we remember
As the clock strikes
And a hush falls across this isle,
Whilst other nations might give voice to grief
This is not our style
For we find solace in the quiet moment,
It is in the silence we remember
The grocer in his shop
All work at a stop as he recalls tales of
A grandfather who came from overseas
To fight for a country he had never seen
And fell in some forgotten foreign field
In this silence he remembers
The crowds by the tower, sheathed in crimson,
A tide of gentle homage to youth forever young
All present, their heads hung
In respect for that lost
Generation denied its chance to flower
In the silence they remember
The woman stood at the Cenotaph,
Stern faced, no laugh today will escape her lips
Her head dips as the priest speaks, her cold cheeks burn
As she offers silent thanks for her grandson’s safe return
From mountains where death hides in wait
In this silence she remembers
Whilst another mother, proud, upright, lips tight
Her face a stream with tears, she has felt the sum
Of all her fears when her child did not come home from that far off fight,
The boy she used to kiss goodnight
She feels his presence here
In this silence where she remembers
And in the crowd I stand, clutching close my wife’s hand
As the faces of my own lost appear before me
And I pray my child will never see
The tide of misery and pain that washed away so many men
On Flanders bloody fields
In this silence, I remember
For they were ours
And they gave their all
And we shall never forget
So though it be a century, or a century more or a century more yet
In this silence we shall remember
James Everton-Milton Poetry 