On visiting a replica of the Viet Nam War Memorial
The black, polished monolith
Moving through space and time,
Twisting and turning on itself,
The sinew binding 2001 Space Odyssey,
Troubled me with its meaning
On the confines of the silver screen,
In the context of the images,
My mind as blank as the stone,
Brain dead as to its message
With no Rosetta Stone
To unlock its story.
What did it mean?
And equally baffling to me
The monoliths laid up in a wall,
Whitened symbols laser etched
Like the words on a page
Telling a story out of Finnegan’s Wake,
All the symbols grouped like sounds,
Thousands of them
In a stream of meaning in a madman’s
Imagination, the only meaning
The arrangement on the pages.
Could they be names?
Signs for people?
What was the message
Locked in this mystery
Impenetrable to a passer by
On this warm, southern fall day?
JM
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