Armistice Day
p. On Remembrance Sunday, I managed to phone Mr. Bsag during the 2 minute silence—my watch was fast, and I had no other time-keeping reference. I felt terrible about that. Two minutes of standing still and thinking about the horror of war and the quiet courage of those who find themselves caught up in it—soldiers and civilians—isn’t much to ask. To make up for my inadvertent thoughtlessness, I was doubly careful to observe the two minute silence today.
p. We heard a radio documentary on Sunday called “Unicorns, Almost”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/religion/remembrance.shtml about the Second World War poet, Keith Douglas. He joined up at the age of 19, and was killed by a tiny fragment of shrapnel at the age of 24. One of his poems particularly struck me; “Vergissmeinnicht”:http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/710.html has all the hard and visceral force of [“Das Boot”:http://www.dasboot.com/]. Douglas doesn’t shield us from the pain and horror, and we have a duty not to look away. I wish this poem was historical, no longer relevant, but the tragedy is that it could have been written this morning.
