The Parade

Standing together

Shoulder to shoulder,

Year after year,

Older and older.

Marching along

To the tune of a song

And the thoughts in my head

Are of those who are dead.

And those who were there

Are fewer and fewer.

But the line is as long

With the newer and newer.

As each conflict stops

Another’s begun

And more of our young

Go to die in the sun.

So I ask, “What’s it for,

Our obsession with war?”

Then the crowds clap and cheer

As our column draws near

And the music gets loud.

With the public so proud

Of our glorious dead,

Are we right in the head?

Andrew Diamond

Part of a suite of poems by Andrew Diamond in aid of Remembrance Day 2013. Andrew said he hopes his poems will ‘make people look for a better, peaceful and more caring world’.

The Soldier, The Parade, The Abandoned Solider, To Helmand and Back, The Survivor