Trees were planted everywhere in honor
Of the soldiers, wrote the composer
Of the never-completed stainless steel plates
To be stacked in a never-excavated vault
Underground. It was amazing, he added,
Of the memorial trees mentioned In that one
Passage of his vast composition, the hope
People invested in an immortality composed
Of something that changed only more slowly
Than their own mayfly memories of the fight.
We can't fix anything, he continued, least
Of all the lives of the soldiers, of the people
The soldiers killed, of the soldiers who killed
Them, but we try, we try, we try to make
A little something left of death more beautiful
And while away our wasting days embedding
Losses in small victories that last a little longer.
He wrote this as proof that what he wrote
He did himself, but he knew, as he sat under
A lightning-struck oak planted a century ago
In honor of a great war, what he composed
Would never be transposed in steel.
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