Your Favorite Poems

[StillettoDoll]

Names

A few names tell it all'
the whole incredible history
of one generation , mine:
name we cannot manage
with a drum-roll , like Waterloo'
or pitch to the eloquence
of tragic Gettyburg.

Hiroshima sticks in our throats;
we choke on the bones of Buchenwald,
spit out the stones of Berlin
Who says Vietnam
burns his tongue,
and Mississippi, o Mississippi
scrubs out or mouths
till we cry mercy.

L. Mueller (1967)