Iraq War Grief Daily Witness Day 52

(left) U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) (2nd L) and armed escorts visit the Shorga marketplace and interact with local merchants while walking the streets of Baghdad April 1, 2007 with General David Petraeus, U.S. Commander in Iraq (not pictured). Photo taken April 1, 2007.
REUTERS/Sergeant Matthew Roe/10th Public Affairs Operations Center/Handout (IRAQ). EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS.

(right) Soldiers salute as an honor guard carries the coffin containing the body of U.S. Army soldier Jason Nunez Fernandez, after his remains were returned to his native Puerto Rico, at Muniz Airbase in Carolina, Monday, April 2, 2007. Fernandez, of the 82nd Airborne Division, was killed last week along with three fellow soldiers in a suicidal bomb attack against his convoy near Baqubah, Iraq.
(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

from The Ballad of Reading Gaol
by Oscar Wilde

VI

In Reading gaol by Reading town

  There is a pit of shame,

And in it lies a wretched man

  Eaten by teeth of flame,

In burning winding-sheet he lies,

  And his grave has got no name.

And there, till Christ call forth the dead,

  In silence let him lie:

No need to waste the foolish tear,

  Or heave the windy sigh:

The man had killed the thing he loved,

  And so he had to die.

And all men kill the thing they love,

  By all let this be heard,

Some do it with a bitter look,

  Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,

  The brave man with a sword!

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April is National Poetry Month