The Appeal of Poppies

Today I wore a bright colour, red to be precise; not clothing wise, but my coat was accessorized with a paper poppy.

I thoroughly support the Poppy Appeal; the fact that hundreds of years after WWI and WWII the public show their remembrance and thanks to the war heroes through a paper flower is quite wonderful. I think it is one of the only times that our society displays the better aspects of human nature: respect.

It is always a terribly touching time of year and that has a quiet air of grace around it. You see old hunched shuffling men sitting in a cold station all day to sell poppies to the public, they have experienced war are still doing a duty to their lost war friends.

I think I am particularly sentimental after doing a War Literature course in university. The poems, written by those who were there are horrific. I'm a cold hearted person, but tears threatened to spill into my Starbucks reading these words. The least we can do is to pin a poppy on our lapel.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.


GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.


In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.


If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen