Life Magzine, June 27, 1969
"The Faces of the American Dead inVietnam, One Week's Toll"
242 servicemen killed between May 28 and June 3
One week’s work
The faces of the dead
Many of them smiling
Row on row of silent faces
Quiet, unimposing all
With dignity
hung upon the wall
Like a graduation class
A short week’s work
For the consciously quiet
Unimposing bureaucrats
Hidden from our souls and selves
In a ponderous, womblike pentacle of power.
This is the quiet unimposing multi-facet face of war
The polite face of Death.
Two hundred forty two – smiles all
Neat and presentable.
Where is the blood that stained your face?
Gone now, thank you.
They quietly returned your forehead and
Your face once so handsome
And you – your quiet smile beguiles
The legs you lost
Before the second questing shell
Came to maim and claim the rest
The faces of Death, anesthetized
Row on row of silent faces
Speak of lives that might have been
But now allowed to be -- graduation pictures
One died in my living room last night
Wedged between Ronald Regan
And a singing soap commercial
And then forgotten
The polite face of war
No twisted babies half consumed
No peasant children or their mothers
For we knew none of them and took no pictures`
And what of the thousand thousand
Almond soldiers
Also handsome
They’re the faceless face of war.
I stand in the warm sunshine
Thinking of your faces
I cannot hear the far off guns and
Rockets reaping next week’s harvest
A new crop, threshed and winnowed
Harvested beyond my hearing
How many many more
Faces taken for the war?
