[Newspoetry] Ghost Soldiers of McLennan County

[DL Emerick]

Death whispers in the ears of all,

But only the old have all quieted down,

Become still enough, unresisting,

to hear Her faintly calling them:

Every day a few of them give in.

 

So, too, the paper shouts now,

Of five million who went Over There,

Now only thirteen are yet resisting,

The youngest at a century and six:

But there shall be a last and then none.

 

These whispers of Death some hear,

When illness or injury lay them up;

Others catch the dim refrain, surprised,

As when accidents befall them,

As when bombs or bullets sing along.

 

They give up the ghost, then,

For their bodies, damaged or worn out,

No longer have a need for such surplus,

The being that hid within the flesh:

It leaves for a better world or none.

 

Some ghosts, though, may stay behind,

Stay on, unattached and yet attached,

Hiding in dark places of empty spaces,

Hiding in the night from every light

That would banish all vanished beings.

 

We name them and call them to us;

Conjure them from imagination,

Make them speak of what they see,

As surely they must, all of time,

Especially all of every tomorrow.

 

The dead words of those gone dead

Else always speak only of things past,

Things of meaning to their past lives,

For they speak not willing of a future,

When they themselves have none of it.

 

Ever they speak, when they talk,

Of Justice as a balance of rights,

Of what the present must do to escape

The weighty errors of their ways,

To live rightly until the end of days.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/newspoetry/attachments/20061113/63e1c6a8/attachment.htm