Sunday, May 26, 2024

Memorial Day: This Bloody Field - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

                                        Memorial Day: This Bloody Field

 

That we may wander o’er this bloody field

To book our dead, and then to bury them

 

-Henry V, IV.vii.75-76

 

Some say this day began

                   As a memorial to the Confederate dead

Some say this day began

                   As a memorial to the Union dead

We only know that now it is a memorial for those

Who died for causes far beyond themselves

 

The glory of our soldiers is in the orphans they fed

The huts they helped repair, the ponchos they gave

To the shivering cold, reassurance to the terrified

Poor comforts to the bombed-out and the dying

 

The glory of our soldiers

Is not in some strident Man of Destiny

Bellowing fancy words from a prompter screen

But in hungry men who gave their C-rats away

 

Before they died in some damned bloody ditch

 

In their honor, then

 

Let us quietly work in causes beyond ourselves

And risk being made into sacraments

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