They suffer most whose memory
Cannot let pain die,
Who in the night their misery
Becomes an endless cry,
Whose sheer desire to kill the pain
Creates each day anew
A pain upon the pain that was
Until the first they knew
Becomes an open raw abyss
Rending heart and soul;
Until the caldron's smouldering hiss
Overflow the bowl.
They conquer last whose war has left
On victor's distant shore
A suffering mass who don the past,
Reliving o'er an o'er
The sword thrust in the mud and dust,
Brave hope abandoned there.
For some return only to learn
The empty shell they bear
Will ever echo to the blast
Of that sojourn in hell.
Bearing home the Trojan germ
Of miasma for their knell.*
These, who know death yet walk away
And are transported home
To live each endless night and day
The corpse they can't become
These prisoners in a searing breast,
Alone in surging throng,
Who cry out for relief and yet
Lay not aside the wrong,
Now clutch at pain they can't forget
Words to describe unknown.
The memory in each suffering heart
Is his and his alone.
*Miasma: noxious odors from decaying matter,
once thought to cause infection.
Adeline Foster
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nam-s-unmourned/
