Carpe Diem Tan Renga – Managua’s “let the ravens come”

Managua wrote

let the ravens come
let them smile as they pick the flesh
from the battlefield

My addition to make it a Tan renga:

forgive but don’t forget
what fed the field of poppies


let the ravens come
let them smile as they pick the flesh
from the battlefield

forgive but don’t forget
what fed the field of poppies

Poppy Field by Claude Monet

Poppy Field by Claude Monet

Linked to Carpe Diem
May 16, 2014

10 responses to “Carpe Diem Tan Renga – Managua’s “let the ravens come”

  1. I’m not sure how you’ve made something so horrific in life beautiful in its representation, but you have.

    • No coincidence … the poem brought up images of WW I and that famous poem by John McCrae
      In Flanders Fields

      In Flanders fields the poppies blow
      Between the crosses, row on row,
      That mark our place; and in the sky
      The larks, still bravely singing, fly
      Scarce heard amid the guns below.

      We are the Dead. Short days ago
      We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
      Loved and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.

      Take up our quarrel with the foe:
      To you from failing hands we throw
      The torch; be yours to hold it high.
      If ye break faith with us who die
      We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.

  2. This post certainly conjured up a flood of poetry memories. John McCrae was a Canadian physician and poet and, back in the day, In Flanders Fields, was a must memorize poem for Canadian school children (this at a time when memorizing 1,000 lines of poetry every school year was part of the curriculum – many lines, of which, I still remember: Longfellow’s The Wreck of the Hesperus, Lowell’s What is so Rare as a Day in June – two of the so called, Schoolroom Poets – Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening . . . ah me.)

    I remember school assemblies around Remembrance Day (November 11) and all the children in the school auditorium would stand to recite In Flanders Fields, by heart (as the expression goes) followed by two minutes of silence. Most of those kids, I doubt, ever forgot “what fed the field of poppies”.

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