VJ NOT VE

VJ NOT VE

Perhaps you’ll forgive

The lack of bunting flying

It’s not because

I’ve a lack of respect

For what was lost

By far too many

To save the world

From fascist tyranny

So quickly forgotten

In a self-obsessed world

Replacing hate with hope

Hoping hate would not return

Perhaps you’ll forgive

A small indulgence here

As I take you back to the not

Forgotten summer of eighty-five

Where from his armchair

Chatting to old comrades

My father made a choice

Not - yet - to celebrate

Forty years of peace

In Europe for his world war

Had been far from over yet

Raging on as peace paraded

Perhaps you’ll forgive

That sentiment you hear

As out in the Far East

He was still surrounded

By a bloody forgotten war

Still fighting on and on

In far distant jungle sweat

My father chose instead

To raise his own toast

His tumbler of whisky

On August the fifteenth

Forgotten, unremarked

So perhaps you’ll forgive

The lack of bunting flying

It brings that last summer

Of birthdays and farewells

Quiet remembrances

Now flooding back

Dad did not survive

The following October

So perhaps you’ll forgive

The lack of bunting flying

It reminds me too much

Of my father dying

MAWH, 070520