On a mild, sunny morning in Canberra in December 1993, a memorial to the Australians who had served in the Spanish Civil War was unveiled at Lotus Bay on Lake Burley Griffin.
During the ceremony, a poem of Aileen Palmer’s was read:
Danger is never danger
till the blood running over the street
is the blood of your own heart’s crying:
the love you were coming to meet.
Death is not death till you
hear all planes pass in fearing:
not my own love they’ll strike!
Not my own love they’re nearing!
War is not war till you
find in the shattered stones
flesh of your own love’s flesh,
dust of your own love’s bones...
