Vale From Carthage
Peter Viereck, 1944
I, now at Carthage. He shot dead at Rome.
Shipmates last May. "And what if one of us,"
I asked last May, in fun, in gentleness,
"Wears doom, like dungarees, and doesn't know?"
He laughed, "Not see Times Square again?" The foam,
Feathering across that deck a year ago,
Swept those five words-like seeds-beyond the seas
Into his future. There they grew like trees;
And as he passed them there next spring, they laid
Upon his road of fire their sudden shade.
Though he had always scraped his mess-kit pure
And scrubbed redeemingly his barracks floor,
Though all his buttons glowed their ritual hymn
Like cloudless moons to intercede for him,
No furlough fluttered from the sky. He will
Not see Times Square-he will not see-he will
Not see Times change;
Shipmates last May. "And what if one of us,"
I asked last May, in fun, in gentleness,
"Wears doom, like dungarees, and doesn't know?"
He laughed, "Not see Times Square again?" The foam,
Feathering across that deck a year ago,
Swept those five words-like seeds-beyond the seas
Into his future. There they grew like trees;
And as he passed them there next spring, they laid
Upon his road of fire their sudden shade.
Though he had always scraped his mess-kit pure
And scrubbed redeemingly his barracks floor,
Though all his buttons glowed their ritual hymn
Like cloudless moons to intercede for him,
No furlough fluttered from the sky. He will
Not see Times Square-he will not see-he will
Not see Times change;
at Carthage (while my friend,
Living those words at Rome, screamed in the end)
I saw an ancient Roman's tomb and read
"Vale" in stone.
Living those words at Rome, screamed in the end)
I saw an ancient Roman's tomb and read
"Vale" in stone.
Here two wars mix their dead:
Roman, my shipmate's dream walks hand in hand
With yours tonight ("New York again" and "Rome")
Like widowed sisters bearing water home
On tired heads through hot Tunisian sand
In good cool urns, and says, "I understand."
Roman, you'll see your Forum Square no more;
Roman, my shipmate's dream walks hand in hand
With yours tonight ("New York again" and "Rome")
Like widowed sisters bearing water home
On tired heads through hot Tunisian sand
In good cool urns, and says, "I understand."
Roman, you'll see your Forum Square no more;
What's left but this to say of any war?
A poem I remember in detail from high school days- this Vale from Carthage, by Peter Viereck, a haunting reminder that some things do not change- as we pass this Memorial Day 2010.
A necessary evil in such a world the American Battle Monuments Commission site HereWhere we honour our dead.
Over 125,000 American dead lie on foreign soil from three wars. Many more must be lost to the decaying earth-never claimed or marked.
These remembrances must be kept and their significance never lessened in the Hope that someday we will come to mark them with no countryman's blood shed away from Home.
Where we are needed we should go-where we are not and do not understand a culture thousands of years older than our own-We should not go. We are not marked there with stones--but unwelcome-Our living and Our dead. Now in this year of 2010- a generation as young and beautiful as any- dwindling in numbers and expectations.
