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The Bodies
The bodies lie along the shoulder of the road.
The bodies lie in an ambulance, a truck bed, a stretcher.
The bodies are strobed in flaring lights, color of fire, color of night.
The bodies rest within the fuselage of a plane at 36,000 feet.
The bodies contemplate silence as they wait in the morgue.
The bodies are moved from room to room, one hour to the next.
The bodies are bathed by strangers and by those who love them.
They are numbered and recorded with signatures and stamps.
They are forgotten by all save those who love them.
They are left to the fields, to the green embrace of earth.
They are given sunlight and storm, a shadow of wings descending.
They are given to rivers, to fire, to ash on the wind-driven rain.
They are carried on the shoulders of stone-faced men.
They are serenaded with tears, with the instruments of suffering.
They are eulogized in great halls and within the confines of loneliness.
They are lowered into the ground and into the vaults of memory.
They are disassembled and disbursed by the steady labor of time.
They learn more about compassion as they are lifted in someone’s arms.
They learn more about the sacred as voices call around them.
They learn more about grieving as their eyes are sewn shut.
The bodies are moved from room to room, one hour to the next.
The bodies are numbered and recorded with signatures and stamps.
The bodies are bathed by strangers and by those who love them.
The bodies contemplate silence as they await the mortician, and
they are forgotten by all save those who loved them.
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Brian Turner has a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country (with W.W. Norton in the U.S., and Penguin/Random House in the UK), and five collections of poetry, from Here, Bullet to The Dead Peasant’s Handbook (all with Alice James Books). He’s the editor of The Kiss and co-edited The Strangest of Theatres. He lives in Florida with his dog, Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.
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Timothy H. O’Sullivan’s On the Battlefield of Gettysburg, 1863
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Author: Terence Winch
