By the Ladd & Whitney memorial, 37 students
wait for the light to change. The dead are dead
below their feet (and a little to the left) quiet
and forgotten (mostly) — having died on the way
to a beautiful war misremembered (as all wars
are only beautiful if misremembered) by men
and women caught up in the fervor of freedom
believed rather than the meditation on freedom’s
best steely shackles and translucent skin.

When the light changes, life (valuable precious
perfect wonderful holy beloved dear kind
hopeful) sweet life crosses toward downtown
with backpacks full of books to quote
in papers to be written about subjects overflowing
with echoes of one war or another, every one
being more beautiful than the next assuming
the next is further back and harder to remember.