Classic Poem

Give this soldier two dates, and engrave
them on the cold face of a lasting tomb.
They will not tell of what he lost and gave,
nor how he lived and was beloved by all
back in the little town from which he came,
nor how, inside a foxhole all alone,
he curled up like a fetus in the womb
when the sniper’s bullet called his name
and, like a judgment to be writ in stone,
found him neither cowardly nor brave.