The small child reaches down, down, down,
And carefully he plucks a poppy, red and black,
From the tomb. And the child is looking at it
When, sharply, his mother says, "Put that back."
"Put that back," the mother says, and as she does
Her voice breaks with emotion.
Puzzled Paul, he puts the poppy down
And tackles this perplexing notion.
"Why, Mother," he asks in confusion,
"Why do you cry so?"
The mother's tears run freely now
While the poppies, row on row,
Gaze sombrely up from the memorial.
Pulling herself together, she says to her son,
"I cry, child," and her tone is kinder than before,
"Because I am sad for all the lost ones."
"But you did not know them," says the boy, still confused,
"So why cry for the men you knew not?"
Meanwhile, the poppies, red and black on their tombs,
They remember the men who were shot.
The mother, she sniffs, and she says at last,
"I cry not for the men, but for England.
For the men she has lost, they are not remembered
Though all of them died for England."
