Thursday, May 8, 2025

Special Feature: Selected Poems for Reflections on VE Day in the shadow of Russia's War on Ukraine

My Dear Friends:

Today marks 80 years since the formal surrender of Nazi Germany and the end of the war in Europe, although the war against Japan would continue until August 15 1945.

As Russia's war on Ukraine still rages in Europe, VE Day, Victory in Europe Day, reminds us all what’s at stake.

...the idea that this was all just history and it doesn’t matter now somehow is completely wrong.

Those values of freedom and democracy matter today.

-- Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer


I would like to share with you the following haiku and tanka selected for reflections on the 80th anniversary of VE Day in the shadow of Russia's War on Ukraine:


          poppies
            again
           & again
           & again
the open fields & the sky

A A Marcoff

all that remains --
dreams of jungle,
sand, sky

Marilyn Hazelton

talking to the tree
outside the window
about rain, about the war

Marlina Rinzen

poppies at dusk
in my dream, he says yes
the boy lost to war

Richa Sharma

the silence 
in an armless man's saluting ...
the sunlight shines
on 30,000 ceramic poppies 
at the Tower of London

Chen-ou Liu

after the speeches
the honored dead return
to their silence

Cor van den Heuvel 

new "peace" plan
fields of sunflowers
bend to the wind

Chen-ou Liu

army of sunflowers
again peace becomes
war somewhere

Dietmar Tauchner

watercolor poppies
blowing across the field . . .
why
is it so hard
to learn from history

Rebecca Drouilhet

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