Memorial

Everyone, it seems, is arguing semantics.

My father, who’s never led battalions, has opinions

on sharing Freedom with the Middle East; my mother

has never lost a child but has complained about protestors

who picket to bring other sons Home.

I’ve always remembered it that way. Growing up

I heard about Bravery and Democracy and Moral, Genius,

Justice, Horror, American, Right, Leftist, Wrong.

As if they understood the power of words, people affix them

to events and other humans in our universal quest for Meaning.

It takes an anniversary to consider more than abstractions.

The television with its endless cycle of images; the prayer meeting

my family drove to at night; the optometrist, some months later,

still collecting glasses to send to Ground Zero; the declaration I made

at fourteen that I wanted to join the war. We weren’t talking then

about Patriotic or Evil. Those were just notions we took for granted,

because the reality was the death figures, my sister saying Amen

after every murmur in church, the trembling way my mother declared,

“This might be the end of the world.”

Something gets lost in language. Emotion replaced by concept,

reason by vague ideology. My sister, no longer terrified,

speaks joyfully about War, speaks hatefully about Poor people.

I don’t care if she’s right; Truth has always been concrete.

We’re forgetting about the neighbors who asked to sleep on your floor,

the floating ember above the rubble—is it a newspaper,

a piece of clothing?—the bus full of silent children

as the radio spoke desperately about what had occurred.

If it was the Apocalypse, it’s still happening. If it was just a plane,

we’re not yet pulled from the crash, ten years later.