“Pain Gives Birth to Poetry” by Gene Levi Chan

Pain Gives Birth to Poetry

On Creating and Growing in the Time of COVID-19

I’ve been thinking about the suffering (much of it solitary) that people are going through, and about the changes taking place, and about my own emotional processing and reacting to what’s going on.

I was having trouble finding my words, and I didn’t have any confidence in what I wanted to communicate. While I was typing and deleting and typing and deleting, a poem came to mind:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.
"In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae

“In Flanders Fields” was written by Major John McCrae after the passing of his friend during WWI. In the midst of the poem’s call to honour the sacrifice of these soldiers by continuing their fight, the red poppy flower has bloomed and is blowing over a field stained with death and littered with crosses. The…