OUR REQUIEM

by Robert Henry

The Gentlemen
Of Riga are the Americans in
Long Island.

They make their meetings
On staircases, thin-lipped like
Victorians, humming the elderly
And lost.

Grandma has stuffed perogies
In their pockets, telling
An airman faster than fire
Was her father.

And after the radio regave,
His hands sewed sheet metal,
Crying the great and ugly.

The walls of a blue hall
Are mingled by the
Living, of the dead.