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Each and Every Day, A Soldier's Lament (poem)
By David Sandgrund
[Printer-Friendly Version] What can I say?
How can I put it into words,
proper words,
its urgency?
its mind-branding enormity?
My best friend - a bond forged in incoming fire
and very literally tempered in the blood of those better than I.
He kept me alive, I kept him out of cells.
He thinks he owes me. I know he's wrong.
He's the best man I know.
Old now, growing older at an increasing rate.
But alive, mostly.
Seven of them there were,
in a place nobody should ever,
ever have had to go,
Such was their innocence that
those grey-eyed professionals
didn't think twice beforehand.
And they got the job done, so that's something, I guess.
The scenes we are occasionally called on to wade into
are things no man - or woman -
with any humanity can take home to those they love.
we love them and we know that nobody should open
the curtains on some things.
So you push it down,
pretend to yourself that you're tough enough
to carry it all another mile.
There's really no other option, is there?
Not one you wish to contemplate.
And it doesn't even matter what the mission was.
That's the saddest thing about it.
Seven of us forty odd years ago.
Since then,
three suicides,
one's fallen off the face of the earth,
A sixth lies mindless in a hospital ward following
a suspected drug overdose
(he didn't leave notes)
and my friend, gentle citizen.
the last US troops left Vietnam
almost half, a memory-clad, slow-march, century ago
still today veterans are committing suicide every day.
Five deaths in the stillness of your sleep
before you slap your bedside alarm for its impudence.
The last sip of your breakfast coffee
commemorates another name's ink drying on the list.
When you finally get to work, add another -
and two more by coffee break,
another by lunch.
When you finally go to sleep in your own soft bed,
so many soldiers will have died by their own hands
and more before the day itself is finally permitted to die.
And tomorrow's another day.
—David Sandgrund
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