Backward Mutters

This rondeau is in honor of Veteran’s Day and is after John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields.”

You may listen to me read the poem via the player below.

In whitened rows, a hundred score,
The graves of soldiers of The War
Who gave their lives, in Ypres fought,
Who landed here, broad waters crossed
To honor country on a shore.

They are the sons of hope forlorn;
Their mothers searched o’er papers poured
The lists of names of boys now lost
	To whitened rows.

Now poppies bloom where trenches tore
The fields of France unto its core
And stole our sons who dearly bought
A no man’s land, its lines forgot,
Where hides neath rows the sons we bore
	In whitened rows.

Photo Credit: Wernervc, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada/, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons