Paul Farley was commissioned to write this poem at the beginning of 2003 before the war in Iraq. He was asked to consider the act of remembrance in the 21st Century and to make a connection to Laurence Binyon's 'For The Fallen' which appears on war memorials across the country. Binyon was born in Lancaster 10 August 1869.

The Opposition, 2003

There are ways of remembering that don''t need
an empty tomb, a fly-past, or the stroke
of an hour; there are portable, pocket guides
to how far the dead are from us. If you look

up from your books, back from this damp November
to the middle of a summer that broke records,
you''ll echo that little leap of faith a mourner
has to make before the cenotaph''s worn words

which lose their edge in the soft, local stone,
grouted with moss, rinsed by Atlantic systems
year in, year out. We know the soldiers'' bones
lie unmarked elsewhere; still, we face the vacuum

as children sit facing the fresh blackboards
on the first days of term, or break the surfaces
of still ponds with stones; it''s like playing God,
making our mark, chalking the blank spaces

that surround us. But we can face the dead
in other ways: they''re up there with the pollen,
soot and fly-ash, staining sunsets red.
The dead are anywhere but where they''ve fallen.

If this poem could talk it''d tell us how being written
meant lying for hours on a garden chair
face up, half finished. Now try to imagine
the insects landing on its white paper,

a war time-zones away, daylight running down,
a slight chill, and because it was left outdoors,
how it saw the night grow huge and full of stars.
The brightest object in the sky was Mars.

Note: In astronomy, an opposition occurs when the sun is on one side of the Earth and the observed object lies on the opposite side: it means the object is fully illuminated. In the summer of 2003, the planet Mars came closer to Earth than at any other time in recorded history.

© Paul Farley, 2003