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Memorial Day

You who live safe In your warm houses,

you who are returning in the evening

hot food and friendly faces: Consider if this is

a man who works in the mud

that knows no peace Who fights for a bread
dying for a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman with no hair and no name


no more strength to remember, Her eyes empty and her womb cold
like a frog in winter.
forget that this was:
Remember these words. Carve them in your heart

When at home because,
lying down, getting up.
Repeat them to your children. Or have you undone
Home,
the illness impede you, your
born twist their faces from you.

[ If This Is a Man, Primo Levi, 1947]