Andrew Koon's tribute to his comrades in arms
Stands watch in the Vermont, Illinois cemetery.
The bronze sentinel leans on his rifle silently.
The bivouac of the dead that he towers over
Isn't likely to be roused til Judgment Day.
The white Grand Army of the Republic markers
With their curt Joe Friday "just the facts, ma'am"
Inscriptions are mustered in obedient ranks
At their positions in block, row and lot.
"The war years were the best years of my life,'
Andrew Koons would sigh, longing for his lost youth.
His practical farm neighbors in rural Illinois
Measured success by harvest and crop yields,
Relegating the War to Independence Day.
They laughed at old Koon's yearly ritual.
He'd fetch his uniform down from the attic,
Struggle to squeeze his bulk into the faded blue,
Maybe pop a button or two, polish up his boots,
Then go to march with the vets in the big parade.
The sword has been sheathed, and the tempered steel
That had once made Georgia howl has lost its edge.
Garrulous ancients now talked of the War of the Rebellion
With affection, as if, on the brink of entering Valhalla
They've reshaped what had been a youthful commitment
To serve their country into a lifeline tied taut
To an outcrop of youth and camaraderie.
The testosterone-driven adrenalin of confrontation
That they'd felt in combat still surged in their memories;
Easing their inevitable rappel into the abyss of death.
The old vets harbor an affection for war.
It's the fat old Rebel General Joe Wheeler
Waddling up a Cuban hill with the U.S. Army now,
Wheezing "Come on boys, let's get them damn Yankees!"
It's the bitter, asthmatic old gringo, Ambrose Bierce
Heading south fifty years after he fought at Chickamauga
To seek his youth again by fighting with Pancho Villa.
It's Johnny Clem, the drummer boy of Shiloh.
Now seventy, begging President Wilson
To let him serve in the ranks, a decorated hero
Who longed to fight again, this time in World War One.
War is the rejuvenation of old soldiers.
Who cluster round the rumbling medicine wagon
To purchase Doctor Mar's Feelgood Tonic.
They pass the patent remedy concoction among each other,
Believing that they've rediscovered their youth by bellowing
Like young bulls, cavorting warlike and howling for blood.
The audience works itself into a frenzy to buy,
Waving the lives of their and their neighbors' children
Like dollar bills as they vie to purchase the patriotic lie.
Andrew Koons tried to sell us the lie as well.
He came back from the war alive, unmaimed;
And on the victorious side of a struggle
That had cost his Nation a half million men.
The serene pose of a sentinel at ease one sees
In the serenity of an cemetery, can't be found
In the smoke, cries and chaos of a battlefield.
Walk over to the statue. Examine it closely,
Then give it a rap. It will resound,
Depressingly hollow.
As empty as the rhetoric that urges men to war.
