remember:"Shiloh" Melville / "Requiem" Dao

"Shiloh: A Requiem"

~ Herman Melville, April 1862

Skimming lightly, wheeling still, 

      The swallows fly low 

Over the field in clouded days, 

      The forest-field of Shiloh— 

Over the field where April rain 

Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain 

Through the pause of night 

That followed the Sunday fight 

      Around the church of Shiloh— 

The church so lone, the log-built one, 

That echoed to many a parting groan 

            And natural prayer 

      Of dying foemen mingled there— 

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve— 

      Fame or country least their care: 

(What like a bullet can undeceive!) 

      But now they lie low, 

While over them the swallows skim, 

      And all is hushed at Shiloh.

"Requiem"
By Bei Dao, translated by Eliot Weinberger

for Shanshan

The wave of that year
flooded the sands on the mirror
to be lost is a kind of leaving
and the meaning of leaving
the instant when all languages
are like shadows cast from the west

life's only a promise
don't grieve for it
before the garden was destroyed
we had too much time
debating the implications of a bird flying
as we knocked down midnight's door

alone like a match polished into light
when childhood's tunnel
led to a vein of dubious ore
to be lost is a kind of leaving
and poetry rectifying life
rectifies poetry's echo

...Requiem...

Memorial Day, Holy Sepulcher Cemetery, 2015

For the Fallen
Poem by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21st September 1914.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.