Arlington

The pallor of so many

small white stones,

the metal in their names,

somber and strange

the calm of my country.

My father buried here,

and his father,

so many obedient lives.

And I too in my time

might have come,

but there is no peace

in this ground for me.

These fields of death

ask for broken columns,

a legend in pitted bronze

telling of the city

pulled into rubble here.

The soil should be thick

with shrapnel

and splinters of bone;

for a shrine, a lamp

fueled with blood,

if blood would burn.