Iraq War Grief Daily Witness - Day 74

top An unidentified woman holds a young boy during the burial service for Army Sgt. Scott Lange Kirkpatrick, Thursday, Aug. 23, 2007, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. Kirkpatrick, 26, of Reston, Va., was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga., and was killed during an ambush in Arab Jabour, Iraq, Saturday, Aug. 11, 2007.
(AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

bottom U.S. Major General Sean Byrne (L) presents a flag to Martha Kirkpatrick (2nd R), the mother of U.S. Army Sgt Lange Kirkpatrick who died August 11, 2007 during an ambush in Iraq, during his burial ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, August 23, 2007. Alongside are Sgt Kirkpatrick's widow Christy (3rd R) and his father Edward Kirkpatrick (R).
REUTERS/Jason Reed (UNITED STATES)

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Ars Poetica
by Archibald MacLeish

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown--

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind--

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea--

A poem should not mean

But be.

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What has been bothering me this whole deployment is the brevity and formality in which the media handles the death of soldiers. It always goes, “PFC John Smith, Norman, Oklahoma, killed by enemy small arms fire in Baghdad. Assigned to 1/43 Engineers, Third Infantry Division.”

What a crock to read that in a paper. It would be wholly appropriate to dedicate a full color photo and a real biography in every paper in America. The anonymity of dead soldiers would evaporate and the public would be forced to look at the faces of the fallen. Would it set in progress change? Perhaps. It certainly would go to show that we’re out here every day, dying for an ideal long forgotten.

from the entry “Stupid Shit of The Deployment Awards!”
at the blog Army of Dude