Try To Remember Some Details

Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing

of the one you love

so that on the day of loss you'll be able to say: last seen

wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat.

Try to remember some details. For they have no face

and their soul is hidden and their crying

is the same as their laughter,

and their silence and their shouting rise to one height

and their body temperature is between 98 and 104 degrees

and they have no life outside this narrow space

and they have no graven image, no likeness, no memory

and they have paper cups on the day of their rejoicing

and paper cups that are used once only.

Try to remember some details. For the world

is filled with people who were torn from their sleep

with no one to mend the tear,

and unlike wild beasts they live

each in his lonely hiding place and they die

together on battlefields

and in hospitals.

And the earth will swallow all of them,

good and evil together, like the followers of Korah,

all of them in their rebellion against death,

their mouths open till the last moment,

praising and cursing in a single

howl. Try, try

to remember some details.