Poppy
Steel and copper wire, wire mesh
and painted high- and lowlights
Approximate size:
W: 77cm x H: 77cm x D: 55cm
14kg
Poppy resembles the freedom I found when I immigrated from turbulent South Africa to tranquil Australia.
Most Australians would be able to link the red poppy to respect for fallen soldiers in World War I. I’m not sure if that’s true for South Africans. I lived there for 36 years and I certainly didn’t have an understanding of the significance of the poppy.
I now know that the poppy became a Remembrance Day symbol because of a poem that was written by a brigade surgeon, John McCrae, who was ‘struck by the sight of bright red blooms on broken ground’.
He wrote “In Flanders Field” in which he ‘channelled the voice of the fallen soldiers buried under those hardy poppies’:
‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row…’
.
.
.
But that’s just the first two lines of the three-stanza poem, Juanita… Why stop there?
‘Between the crosses, row on row…’
I have to stop.
Because
I
. . . have . . .
. . . . . . seen . . .
. . . . . . . . crosses . . .
row
. . . on row . . .
. . . . . . on row . . .
. . . . . . . . . on row . . .
white crosses...
hundreds of them...
Each representing a farmer that was recently murdered in South Africa in a very current and active war.
The Witkruismonument outside Polokwane: a series of white crosses erected in memory of murdered South African farmers.
I managed to escape that war almost two years ago when I was able to immigrate to this beautiful country that I now call home.
In the words of Christian Morgenstern: “In every work of art, the artist himself is present.”
Herein lies that truth for me:
I’m a poppy in the field,
swaying in a breeze;
I’m not broken by the battle;
to the guilt I will not yield
I’m the little one with curly hair
who jumps for joy and freedom
in a land abound’ in nature’s gifts
of beauty, rich and rare…
I will embrace your history, Australia,
and I will make it my own.
And I will pray with you, South Africa,
for the end of your war.
