I posted this poem a couple Memorial Days ago, then took it down because I thought I had violated copyright. Though I still haven't gotten permission, I am nevertheless posting it again and providing a link to the book from which it is copied, in the hopes that at least one reader might go purchase it. (You won't be sorry.) I profit in no way from reproducing this poem except from the hope that it may prove meaningful to others, and as a tribute to those who have given of themselves for the cause of others.
His brother's sacrifice in war moved Thomas Merton to offer his grief as a sacrament. In this exquisite portrayal of redemptive sacrifice, he "pays it forward" that we all might be moved to appreciate more fully the sacrifice that not only human soldiers but ultimately God in Christ have made on our behalf, that we may in turn pay it forward ourselves.
FOR MY BROTHER: REPORTED MISSING IN ACTION, 1943
from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton
Sweet brother, if I do not sleep
My eyes are flowers for your tomb;
And if I cannot eat my bread,
My fasts shall live like willows where you died.
If in the heat I find no water for my thirst,
My thirst shall turn to springs for you, poor traveller.
Where, in what desolate and smokey country,
Lies your poor body, lost and dead?
And in what landscape of disaster
Has your unhappy spirit lost its road?
Come, in my labor find a resting place
And in my sorrows lay your head,
Or rather take my life and blood
And buy yourself a better bed --
Or take my breath and take my death
And buy yourself a better rest.
When all the men of war are shot
And flags have fallen into dust,
Your cross and mine shall tell men still
Christ died on each, for both of us.
For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain,
And Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring;
The money of Whose tears shall fall
Into your weak and friendless hand,
And buy you back to your own land:
The silence of Whose tears shall fall
Like bells upon your alien tomb.
Hear them and come: they call you home.
