Five Years Later

Five years ago. How long ago it seems,  
That judgment day for thousands,  
The day the world pledged justice:  
Oh, what a day. The memories,  
Children huddled in small clusters  
In the cafeteria, waiting for parents  
To pick them up: military parents.  
Would they see them long? They didn’t know,  
Possibly spending precious time before duty called.  
Then home, to watch eight seconds for three hours.  
 
Oh the promises we made,  
The fearsome stamp of words. I,  
Not knowing what to do, cried “We Will Not Forget”  
With the rest. For one month, tension,  
For one week retaliation. Then, missions accomplished,  
Hands shaken, a world moved on.  
Widows receiving millions for mourning in front of a judge:  
And they want us to grow up optimists  
On the matter of human actions. Score one for Calvin; Locke, you lose this round.  
   
Five years. Yet it seems like a different era;  
Such is the distortion of youth. What’s on the news tonight,  
Nine-eleven or Katrina? How can they lump together  
The destruction of two thousand homes with the destruction of two thousand lives?  
Still we cry “We Will Not Forget.” A noble cause,  
But in truth, fiat only, save two thousand families  
Mourning two thousand souls.  
Ragged ribbon stubs on car antennas, long since bleached white.  
Nothing but a faded bumper sticker and a memory colored with red, white, blue, and smoke.  
In this age of mandated remembrance, does anyone dare forget? No, never.  
Except on the other three hundred sixty days of the year.  
   
And people cry about long lines at airport terminals.  
Naïve ones! Listen! You can still hear two thousand voices echoing.  
Should we have two thousand more? Four? Eight?  
But keep saying “We Will Not Forget.” Because they can’t hear you in their empty graves,  
And ashes know no irony.