And the Time Is: Poems, 1958-2013

At the Site of the Memorial

125 At the Site of the Memorial 1 No soldiers choose to die. It’s what they risk by being who and where they are. It’s what they dare while saving someone else whose life means suddenly as much to them as theirs. Or more. To honor them why speak of duty or the will of governments? Think first of love each time you tell their story. It gives their sacrifice a name and takes from war its glory. 2 Seeing my words in stone reminds me of a grave . . . Not that the words are wrong, but seeing them so permanent makes me feel posthumous as those commemorated here. Lawson, Gideon, Butler, Pinder, Port, Sarnoski, Shughart. . . . Stephanie Shughart tells me, “Randy and I had twenty-two months.” She smiles as if 126 to prove that gratitude and grief can be compatible. I want to believe her . . . Brady, who saved 5,000 men by Medivac and lived, reads every dead man’s name as if it were his own. He’ll read them in his dreams. Next to the next of kin, I think how all these men risked everything for something more than living on. Life meant not one more day for them but one more act. Just one . . . ...