Out - 3
Remembrance Day
The poppy is a wound, the poppy is the mouth Of the grave, maybe of the womb searching – A canvas-beauty puppet on a wire Today whoring everywhere. It is years since I wore one It is more years The shrapnel that shattered my fathers paybook Gripped me, and all his dead Gripped him to a time He no more than they could outgrow, but, cast into one, like iron Hung deeper than refreshing of ploughs In the woe-dark under my mothers eye – One anchor Holding my juvenile neck bowed to the dunkings of the Atlantic So goodbye to that bloody-minded flower You dead bury your dead Goodbye to the cenotaphs on my mothers breasts Goodbye to all the remaindered charms of my tether's survival Let England close. Let the green sea-anemone close.
Out - 3 - meaning Summary
Inherited War Grief
In this Remembrance Day poem, Hughes treats the poppy not as a simple patriotic emblem but as a sign of bodily injury, death, and inherited grief. Memories of his father's war wound and his mother's sorrow make national commemoration feel personally constricting. The speaker ends by rejecting ceremonial consolations, seeking release from the emotional and historical burden that has shaped him since childhood.
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