Poetry in Ordinary Time: Remembrance Day

'Silence' -- for Remembrance Sunday

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 seethes instead with wraiths and whispers,
And all the restless rumour of new wars,
The shells are falling all around 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.

-- Malcolm Guite, Sounding the Seasons

To listen to the poet read this aloud, click HERE.