Memorial Day is now, at least part of the day, an interval of solitude for me. The idea of all those men and women who died for our country demands a kind of silence at times because words and music cannot quite voice the intensity of feelings, memory. and imagination our loss of them brings. On this day, we pay what honor we can—our inability to thank those who gave all for our nation.
From Alun Lewis:
And we talked of girls, and dropping bombs on Rome,
And thought of the quiet dead and the loud celebrities
Exhorting us to slaughter.
"All Day It Has Rained", line 17, from Raider's Dawn and Other Poems (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1942) p. 16.
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