Memorial Day

Today I watched the Cleveland Heights Memorial Day parade make its way past my perch on the stairs outside the Rockefeller building.
As the police car drove past us at the tail end of the rather short procession, my friend, Susan, looked at me and asked,

"Where were the vetrans? There were no vetrans in this parade! Isn't there something wrong with a Memorial Day parade with no vetrans?."

There were plenty of politicians, boy scouts, girl scouts, old cars, and a couple marching bands, but no vetrans.
It was rather disturbing.
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On Memorial Day we pay tribute to those who made the supreme sacrifice.
Many of us are familiar with these two poems from our high school Literature classes. They tugged at my heart with their timeless message when I first read them as a girl during the Vietnam War. The rising death tolls in Iraq and Afganistan remind me how little has changed.

"In Flanders Fields"

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing, fly.
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short day ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae (1919)


"Grass"

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo
Shovel them under and let me work-
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.


Carl Sandburg (1918)