Jeremy Corbyn to recite Wilfred Owen's poem 'Futility' in Remembrance Sunday memorial service
Jeremy Corbyn will be laying a wreath at the Cenotaph and will then attend the ceremony in his constituency of Islington North
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Your support makes all the difference.Jeremy Corbyn will recite a poem about the futility of war at a memorial service on Remembrance Sunday in his constituency.
Mr Corbyn will join the other party leaders to lay a wreath bearing his own message at the Cenotaph and will then attend the ceremony in Islington North.
There, he will recite "Futility" by the First World War solider poet Wilfred Owen at memorial service in his constituency.
The poem tells of a fallen soldier and concentrates on the meaning of existence, the pointlessness of war and inevitability of death.
This is what the poem says:
Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds,—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth’s sleep at all?
There had been speculation in the past few weeks about whether Mr Corbyn, a lifelong pacifist, would wear a red poppy to the ceremonies. In the past he has chosen to wear a white poppy alongside the red one, which symbolises the belief that there are better ways of resolving conflicts than war.
Mr Corbyn wore a red poppy at the Festival of Remembrance in the Albert Hall on Saturday night and his team have been adamant that he will only wear a red poppy.
The Queen will be joined by the Duke of Edinburgh and members of the leading political parties at the Cenotaph in central London.
A two-minute silence will take place at 11am and wreaths will be laid at the foot of the Whitehall memorial, followed by a veterans' march.
The ceremony is expected to be slightly shorter this year, with arrangements made to reduce the time war veterans are made to stand before the parade moves off.
But politicians will continue to lay wreaths individually after a Westminster backlash forced a rethink by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which oversees ceremonial arrangements.
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