Last year on Remembrance Day I was at home listening to the radio when the time came for the Two Minutes Silence. suddenly the radio itself went quiet. I had not moved to turn the dial or adjust the volume. There was something extraordinarily powerful about that deep silence from a ‘live’ radio, a sense that, alone in my kitchen, I was sharing the silence with millions. I stood for the two minutes, and then, suddenly, swiftly, almost involuntarily wrote this sonnet. Since I posted it last year, here, and on audioboo, it has become the single most viewed and heard, of all my posts, and strangely, looking at the ‘stats I have found that almost half of my total ‘views’ have been from Germany, something that I find strangely moving. You can hear the sonnet, as I recorded it on November 11th last year, minutes after having composed it, by clicking the ‘play’ button if it appears or clicking on the title.
The striking image above is ‘Poppy Day’ by Daliscar and the one below is ‘Silent Cross’ by Margot Krebs Neale
November pierces with its bleak remembrance
Of all the bitterness and waste of war.
Our silence tries but fails to make a semblance
Of that lost peace they thought worth fighting for.
Our silence seeths instead with wraiths and whispers,
And all the restless rumour of new wars,
The shells are singing as we sing our vespers,
No moment is unscarred, there is no pause,
In every instant bloodied innocence
Falls to the weary earth ,and whilst we stand
Quiescence ends again in acquiescence,
And Abel’s blood still cries in every land
One silence only might redeem that blood
Only the silence of a dying God.
Silent Cross by Margot Krebs Neale
Malcolm Guite 
I love this photo.
Beautiful. Thank-you.
And this is why we need the poets.
Thank you – this says all that my turbulent heart wants to say on this confusing day.
Thanks Tanya. Yes the ambivalence of the whole day is almost unbearable.
Thank you. So very powerful. Your final lines still linger in my mind.
The last line keeps echoing in my head. Thank you.