Row on Row

Posted by DAVE ID (Montreal, Canada) on 11 September 2007 in Miscellaneous.

Cote Des Neiges Cemetery Series: Taken on the last day before a special law forcing the caretakers back to work during a union dispute. The whole cemetery has been left without care, not to mention that hundreds of bodies are left in freezers unburied, leaving the city in a crisis. I was also escorted outside the cemetery for taking pictures without a permit. As with everywhere else in Montreal, photography is a crime.

On an artistic level, the abandonment of the grounds leave us with visual treasures.

Though there are no poppies, seeing the rows of graves made think of the poem:

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.