[Worship] For Veterans Day: A Black Veteran at the Vietnam Veterans Wall in DC

[Martha McGovern]

Powerful.  Let's remember this for Memorial Day or Veterans Day.
Thank you, Peg.

Martha


From: Peg Clifford via Worship 
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2018 7:46 AM
To: Worship & Music Committee members 
Cc: Peg Clifford 
Subject: [Worship] For Veterans Day: A Black Veteran at the Vietnam Veterans Wall in DC




Facing It
Yusef Komunyakaa, 1947
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears. 
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s 
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

>From Dien Cai Dau by Yusef Komunyakaa. Copyright © 1988 by Yusef Komunyakaa. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.









https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/facing-it?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Poem-a-Day%20%20March%2019%202018&utm_content=Poem-a-Day%20%20March%2019%202018+CID_a198768af7371fa1c8bb0b2dd35bc5f9&utm_source=Email%20from%20Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=Facing%20It


"...indifference to e


vil is worse than evil itself,
that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible. "
                               Abraham Joshua Heschel 




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