For the Ageless Fallen 

"They shall not grow old 
As we that are left grow old"
             -from "For the Fallen" by Lawrence Bunyin


You cannot remember the dead
They are numberless 
The young Alabaman Jesse H. Hutchins, signed up after Sumter, 
Four years later having survived the famous slaughters in the dirt of Virginia 
and the green killing fields of Gettysburg
stumbled on a campsite raid 
in flight from the final redoubt of Petersburg
and joined his fellow six-hundred twenty-thousand comrades
who slipped betimes 
between the smoky doom of Charleston Harbor 
and the shrunken days of Appomattox 
 
They do not grow old 
who like Private Luther M. Bent of Quincy, Massachusetts
died cruelly of his wounds one month after Second Bull Run
(as if one Bull Run were not enough)
Or that other Massachusetts solider who dreamed 
"that everything looked the same as when I left,
but I couldn't see anyone I knew."

They will never see anyone they knew 
though everything looked the same, and always will, 
the moment time stopped 

We will grow old, and change 
but the earth, our home, abides
until the waters close once more
upon our heads
and we are forgotten too





Twentieth Century Man 


Lawrence, death haunted your days
The last of the brood, the baby of the family when your father died
Leaving behind unrequited syndicalist longings in another tongue,
the tongue of your childhood
You might have loved him, but you did not know him
Your brother, the true man of the family, the family that loved and cherished you,
disappeared high over the Pacific
Closer to the angels or the eye of God than mortal life could bear 
They called him “missing,” but a smart kid in uniform knew what that meant
A nickel got you a subway ride back to Mom's or a ferry ride from the Charon who serviced Staten Island
Mom was old when you came back from the war, 
enraging you with her unprovoked decline
When your sister took her shopping for relief of the feet and the shop girl talked her into sensible shoes
she declared to all humanity (in the language of her childhood)
 “Now you can say I’m an old lady”
No one wants to be old, but in those days not so many made it to the place where 'old' seems like the better choice
But you did, Lawrence, survivor, fortunate son,
there are you happy
 
When your embittered sister, some viper slipping between her and her heart, 
the last of your siblings
Died that summer, the weight of the ages shifted, the scales tipped,
What were you holding onto but your fear?
You faith countenanced no second act, no leaning together for an ageless photo in the bleached sheaths of some inter-generational heavenly Seder
 
Lawrence, I do you wrong
Every life sheds its quota of departures
(Count the heads and you'll know how many)
You shouldered your losses and forward marched 
Lifting your little piece of the world
On love’s back and holding it longer than even (no, especially) you thought possible
Now rest yourself, father, sit you down
All souls ride together on the journey to last things