Nam's Unmourned

They suffer most whose memory Cannot let pain die, Who in the night their misery Becomes an endless cry, Whose sheer desire to kill the pain Creates each day anew A pain upon the pain that was Until the first they knew Becomes an open raw abyss Rending heart and soul; Until the caldron's smouldering hiss Overflow the bowl. They conquer last whose war has left On victor's distant shore A suffering mass who don the past, Reliving o'er an o'er The sword thrust in the mud and dust, Brave hope abandoned there. For some return only to learn The empty shell they bear Will ever echo to the blast Of that sojourn in hell. Bearing home the Trojan germ Of miasma for their knell.* These, who know death yet walk away And are transported home To live each endless night and day The corpse they can't become These prisoners in a searing breast, Alone in surging throng, Who cry out for relief and yet Lay not aside the wrong, Now clutch at pain they can't forget Words to describe unknown. The memory in each suffering heart Is his and his alone. *Miasma: noxious odors from decaying matter, once thought to cause infection.