Requim: Armistice Day 1995 Poem by Brian Taylor

This year
the dead are blind
and do not seem to hear
our prayers.
Nor do they seem to mind
that we now own
what they once thought was theirs.

Here
they shed no tear
at all the pain
they left behind.

Now,
when they come again,
they only find
echoes of the long-ago,
and landscapes that they hardly know;
deserted buildings, unpeopled streets,
lonely corridors, empty rooms,
where each his own image meets
in every shape it now assumes.