When War shatters bodies
and pain attends,
the cloth of life
forever rends.
Those who live
don’t want to know
how scythe of War
dealt final blow.
War Death comes also
serpentine,
fanged and poisonous,
cloaked, unseen.
Many there are,
alive in name,
dead by horrors,
never the same.
War breeds Death
of more than one kind:
not just the body,
but spirit,
will,
mind.
Maybe the deadliest
weapon of choice:
words — bloodless shrapnel —
the conscience-less voice.
Or maybe the words
lying fallow, unsaid,
lead to as many
mangled and dead.
How are we humans
to be made again whole
when War amputates
our reason, our soul?
It’s Memorial Day weekend in America, dear reader, a time to remember those who have died in service to the ideals of this country, ideals a bit wobbly at the moment. In no way do I trivialize the deaths of men and women whose bodies litter our history and whose families forever bear the pain of death by war, but I can’t help thinking this Memorial Day of all those whose minds and souls died but whose bodies still breathed. POWs, MIAs, and those who returned with invisible gangrene. We are butchering each other still, and this Memorial Day seems sadly weighted with futility.
The dedication pictured above is from the book “Family Separation and Reunion: Families of Prisoners of War and Servicemen Missing in Action,” a compilation of essays by medical professionals involved in establishing care after Viet Nam. One of those was written by our intrepid photographer, S.W. Berg, CAPT, MC, USN (Ret).
It seems to me that this dedication is appropriate for all the families who ache because of war death.