Armistice Wind - Edit2

[dukealien]

Thanks again to all the valued critics.  With three or four, it becomes possible to triangulate  ...

@rollingbrianjones - Thanks for your thoughts, very insightful.  I haven't incorporated quite all your suggestions, and not always in the way you suggested, but I do believe they've improved the work.

@RiverNotch - Your critique is particularly valued, though the edit complies with its recommendations the least.  They lead in the direction of a better poem, but I'm caught up in the story and how I set about telling it.  If I were a better poet, I could do both!

Though ponderously expressed, the bit about the meridian is to indicate the hour of 11:00am at which the llistening vigil commenced.  This is a reference to the Great War's armistice, which took effect on the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour, eleventh day of the eleventh monnth.  Itself, perhaps, a labored attempt by the negotiators to express their sense that this was the very last (eleventh hour) opportunity to save some kind of civilization from a dark age or mere anarchy.  Similarly, "Friday last" is an archaic expression which was current in the early 20th century.  Aside from that, it helps out with the meter and Armisitice Day did happen to be a Friday this year.  But, as this all requires explanation, it does constitute a stumble and criticism is warranted.

edit2;

Armistice Wind


On Friday last, an hour before
the sun reached its meridian
I listened indoors for the crash
of guns.

Police shoot volleys on this day
each year in my town’s graveyard, blanks
to symbolize an armistice -
not peace.

Little heard, just acorns falling
rattled like spent bullets on
hunched helmets as they struck my roof
and rolled.

An east wind stirred dead leaves and limbs
to rustle, flutter, softly thunder,
warning ghost of distant drumfire
waking.

Then louder, rushing past, that gale
blew shrill, demanding pan-pipe notes -
trench-whistles calling men to rise
and fall.

So Friday last I never heard
those guns proclaiming armistice:
wind must have carried their reports
away.