White Stones

Remembering the ungrateful dead

WHITE STONES

“Now it is fifteen years you have lain in the meadow . . .

It’s a long time to lie in the earth with your honor:
The world, Soldier, the world has been moving on . . .

We are acting again like civilized beings:
People mention it at tea . . .
You can rest now in the rain in the Belgian meadow. . .”                 

                 ---Archibald MacLeish,
                                                  from ‘Lines for an Internment’
                                                                                          (1933)

Now it is many years beyond the fifteen he wrote,
and the graves have grown beyond the Belgian
meadow---now in many meadows; too many graves,
        too many names on the white stones;
too many bones lie beneath the white stones
                on distant lands;
too many names---forever young---engraved in
shiny black rock  far from the scene of their
                    sacred honor.
In Arlington the numbers grow like wildflowers
whose bloom is beautiful and all too short.

And the white stones of every military graveyard
cry out in moonlight for justice, for retribution
against the mad men who imposed their lusts,
        their arrogance, their will to power
into the lives of the innocent, the helpless,
those who wanted only to grow into old age, and
fall asleep listening to the rain fall gently on the
                good, good earth.

Reviews

[Chris Shaw]

Poignant images here Ted in this fine free verse poem. All that sacrifice, all those lives cut short before they even really lived. There but for fortune go you or I. Born at the wrong time. Really makes you think. We owe them so much.

Chris

[kentuck14]

thank you Chris.

[John Alexander McFadyen]

A very spirited and soulful and beautifully captured sentiment. Layed out in a lovely, flowing well paced poem preceded by a very poignant verse from 1933. Nicely done with a sad piece.

[kentuck14]

thanks John for your thoughts