A Dedication

Image by Chris Weisiger



A Dedication


We stood by the library.
It was an August night.
Priests and sisters of hundreds
of unsaid creeds, passed us
going their separate pondered roads.
We watched them cross under
the corner light.

Freights on the edge of town
were carrying away flatcars of steel
to be made into secret guns;
we knew, being human, that they
were enemy guns, and we were
somehow vowed to poverty.

No one stopped, or looked long,
or held out a hand.
They were following orders received
from hour to hour;
so many signals, all strange,
from a foreign power;
"But tomorrow," you whispered,
"Peace may flow over the land."

At that corner in a flash of lightning
we two stood; that glimpse we had
will stare through the dark forever;
on the poorest roads we would be
walkers and beggers,
toward some deathless meeting
involving a crust of bread.


William Stafford

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