Anniversary

[b][i]***This piece was written in September this year.

Yesterday was the anniversary of what has become known throughout the World as 9/11. All of us can remember staring in total disbelief at our TV screens as these terrible events unfolded. In that indiscriminate slaughter almost every nation on Earth lost nationals, every religion on earth lost members. I can remember the nations of the earth standing in silent tribute to the memory of those who died, The stock exchange in London fell uncharacteristically silent as the traders stood by their blinking computer screens, all of London and all of the UK fell silent as we remembered those who lost their lives that awful day. My thoughts and prayers last night were for those whose loved one didn't come home that day.

I also was thinking of London's 7/7 in 2005 when rush hour underground trains and a London bus were bombed.

I wrote this poem on the 14th July 2005 it is about the week from 7th - 14th July during which there was also a parade of war veterans commemorating the end of World War Two. On the 14th July 2005 the two minute silence to commemorate the dead brought London and indeed the UK to silence, many countries of world stood silent too in solidarity

Folk going to work
Eventful journey
Simple folk became heroes.
Pain, death wrought by boys
Misled by evil.
Doctors cycled in
To help the maimed
Emergency plans swing
Into force, practiced long
We are not afraid

Monday morning comes
London goes to work
Like every Monday?
gardens of flowers
sprout forth from grey streets
tributes to the dead
a suited gent takes time
to walk through and look
we remember but
we are not afraid

Old backs straighten
Carry heavy colours
Old men march to
Tunes of long ago
Women whose men
Did not come back
A grandson in
His Grandpa’s place
They taught us how
And we are not afraid

A bus driver speaks
Flanked by colleagues
Then a city silent
Cabmen stand by their cabs
City gents outside
Their offices, the Queen
Outside the Palace
Women bring their children
To see and understand
The power to call for
London’s silence is
Ours never yours
We are not afraid