The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses:
who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night
and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died.
Remember us. …
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for
peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say,
it is you who must say this.
We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died; remember us.
–Archibald MacLeish
Who do you remember this Memorial Day? What do you do in their memory?
Each Sunday we read the names of those who have died in the war.The reading is preceded by this poem in order to remind people why we are recognizing those names read. It is a very serious and poignant moment.
American Kids with Rifles
When Woodrow Wilson signed up for the war to end all wars,
Beguiled by Churchill, Clemenceau, and other Allied w***es.
He saved the British empire, and he rescued Gallic pride
With American kids with rifles, who fought, and won, and died.
When French and British weakness gave the Axis half the Earth
And right on schedule, Yeats’ Rough Beast went slouching towards its’ birth
No one would face the swastika and quench the rising sun
But American kids with rifles, who fought, and died, and won.
If barbarism comes again and brings its’ bloody trial
And Europe shrugs and hides its’ face in impotent denial,
One thing you can depend upon without the slightest doubt;
American kids with rifles will die to bail them out.