The little ships of Dunkirk, 1940

“The little boats of England
The little motor boats
The little penny steamers
From Lands End to John O’Groats
The Brighton Belle, the Margate Queen
The Vigilant, The Lark.
The Saucy Jane, The Gracie Fields
(Even a Noarh’s Arc)
Picked up their country’s message
That it’s back was to the Wall.
There is danger, there is danger,
Will you answer to the call?
Francis Drake, and Collinwood
And Nelson of the Nile
Were on their quarterdecks again
-You should have seen them smile
When all the little boats pushed out
From Dover to Dunkirk
To heed their country’s message
That was their job of work.”

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

YOUR FAVOURITE POEM

SENT IN BY YOU WHAT’S YOURS?

Self-Ish (estranged from family) -Promote Yourself

 

 

   

.

You won’t see me again

After this…

Not in this lifetime anyway

There is a choice

There is a voice

There is a path

I think of you often…I think of all of you

There is not a day that I don’t

So far from me now

I dragged my feet under the weight

Slowed my pace

Hoping you’d catch up

Always looking over my shoulder for a sign

(how my heart aches)

Finally surrendered to the possibility

That you might not show

And now…

This melancholy has become my “ages’” appropriate seasonal garment

So ungrateful it must seem

To know of the Light You’ve Shone me

And still allow for self-loathing

So unworthy…

Peace makes me feel more guilty

Love as I’d understood it

Was always a thing filthy

I have no way to show anyone

No words that can tell

What it is I see

How can i?

When I cannot yet believe what is happening to me.

And yet I am compelled to shuffle along with this pen

like an albatross around my neck

To the very end

As if it were my only friend

Though in the Master’s plan it may seem of little use

(exercises in discipline and obedience basic training in preparation, how much will stick?)

Am I Just another desperate wannabe Christian

fishing for a new excuse?

I fall face down upon your Mercy yet again Oh Lord

In a cloud of dust,

With a THUD!

And grieve…

My name is mud.

And if You’ve taught me one thing

though i’ve struggled, it is this…

that even “mud”

can believe

Oneagleswings, Moncks Corner, S.C.

• anthony gomez

Wishes and Dreams, – Promote Yourself

I held a heart that wasn’t mine,

It sang songs, but not for me

Just how crazy had I been

All along hearing,

So incorrectly

I loved you until, my heart bled dry

Till the music,

No longer played

Till the only sound within my head

Was the echoing madness,

Of an empty day

It was you, not the sun

That lit my days

It was you, not the stars

That filled my nights

Now it’s me, all alone

For which no music plays

Now it’s me, all alone

To create my new light

Dear Sadness and Loneliness,

You are just,

Mere vagabonds

Passing through

Despite your efforts

To stay with me,

Welcomed, your not,

As this chapter starts new

Because I fear not,

For the sun, It will rise,

Each day as it’s done before

The Milky Way, galaxies,

Stars of the night,

Will be mine for wishes

And dreams once more

​-Heather

The Starting End

www.poemsfromherlife.com​

Poem about the Dunkirk Evacuation

The “Evacuation of Dunquecue) Dunkirk” was written by a member of the Enniskillen Fusillers, an Irish infantry regiment of the British Army, who participated in the evacuation. The author of the poem wrote it during his recuperation from the war.  It given to Iris Fewkes who it turn submitted it to Joyce Mills of Age Concern Library in Leicester, English.

Evacuation of Dunquecue (Dunkirk)

Withdrawal orders had just come through,
Where we were bound for no one knew,
As time past by we heard the talk,
Of our destination being the beach at Dunquecue.

For days and nights on the country wide,
The troops on foot fought side by side,
While on roads in one unending line,
The convoys race against father time.

Hedges and roadside we know its true,
Were strewn with guns and vehicles too,
But no one seemed to think of the loss or gain,
Their thoughts were one, to live and fight again.

The weary trek was oh! so long,
But the allied troops were still in song,
The thought of loved ones there at home,
Gave British tommies no want to roam.

A ruined mass was what we saw,
When at last we reached the Dunquecue Shore,
The blazing docks with their reddish light,
Give guide to see us thought the night,

But what a sight there was in store,
The boys in blue and ships galore,
The Air Force too did play their part
In the Epic of Dunquecue right from the start.

Herbert Read – ‘Ode: Written during the Battle of Dunkirk, May 1940′

“Sixteen years ago I built this house

By an oak on an acre of wild land…”

Herbert Read (1893-1968), anarchist poet, veteran of the 1st World War (he got a DSO and a MC), living in Norfolk during the Second World War, published a short collection of poems in 1944 under the title ‘A World Within a War’, the above lines taken from the title-poem. It is a time when every thought and action is “within a war” – even here in his idyllic countryside retreat. Read, born in Yorkshire, orphaned as a child, was, my research tells me, committed to the ‘people’s war’, the aim of which Evelyn Waugh said was to “direct the struggle for national survival into proletarian revolution”. He wrote theory on anarchism; was an art critic, championing Henry Moore and other modern artists; and co-founded the Institute of Contemporary Art as “an adult play-centre” and “a source of vitality and daring experiment”. Later in his life he accepted a very un-anarchist knighthood from the very un-anarchist Queen of England.

ODE

Written during the Battle of Dunkirk, May 1940