November 2: All Souls 

War Memorials

The voices of three memorials
denouncing war
speak singularly at first.

Remember the Holocaust.
Remember Korea.
Remember Vietnam.

Silenced voices
rise from an enclave of darkness.
Voices resurrect by human hands
touching their names graven on a black wall.
Voices of surreal statues of men
frozen forever in a bog
utter words straight into your eyes.

At first,
a cacophony
like the squawk of three lone gulls
lost inward over a coastal city,
but as you listen
the voices dissolve
into one cadence.

A rhythmic movement of sound,
rising and falling
like the waves of the sea
pleading:
Remember me,
Remember us,
Remember what can come from fear
because we are not alike.

The Passion of Our Lord
Jesus Christ
according to us
of the late twentieth century.