NAME ON A WALL

All you are, after all, is a name on a wall – just a name between names on a stone.
Yet somebody may come who will find himself numb to the numberless names, save your own,
And his eyes will there linger; he'll reach out a finger across the dark letters to crawl,
Just as others have traced other names they have faced with the fingers they've touched to the wall.

Though your name is asleep on a black granite sheet, you awake in the minds of your friends
Who have all come to call to read names on a wall, just to see who has come to his end;
And they stand, swapping stories concerning the war and the dead man they fondly recall.
They're a fitting memorial, warm and corporeal, at the cold stone of the wall.

Through the twistings of fate, I was born years too late to know anyone's name on the list.
If the two or three veterans whom I have met are an inkling of what I have missed,
Then, name, I mourn for you and the other names too, for these vets are the best of us all
And I wish I knew why the best flew off to die and to chisel their names on a wall.

There's no man who dares tell me the depths of the hell he had plumbed with you there in that fight
So I'm left in the dark till an offhand remark brings another grim detail to light.
When the veterans, too, are as lifeless as you are, who'll know then what caused you to fall?
Who will know you as more than just some man of war who became just a name on a wall?


Coypright © Sharon E. Abbott
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