September 11, 2002

Local heroes

By THOMAS LYNCH

ome days the worst that can happen happens.
   The sky falls or evil overwhelms or
   the world as we have come to know it turns
   towards the eventual apocalypse
   long predicted in all the holy books--
   the end-times of old grudge and grievances
   that bring us each to our oblivions.
   Still, maybe this is not the end at all,
   nor even the beginning of the end.
   Rather, one more in a long list of sorrows
   to be added to the ones thus far endured,
   through what we have come to call our history--
   another in that bitter litany
   that we will, if we survive it, have survived.
   God help us who must live through this, alive
   to the terror and open wounds: the heart
   torn, shaken faith, the violent, vengeful soul,
   the nerve exposed, the broken body so
   mingled with its breaking that it's lost forever.
   Lord send us, in our peril, local heroes.
   Someone to listen, someone to watch, someone
   to search and wait and keep the careful count
   of the dead and missing, the dead and gone
   but not forgotten. Some days all that can be done
   is to salvage one sadness from the mass
   of sadnesses, to bear one body home,
   to lay the dead out among their people,
   organize the flowers and casseroles,
   write the obits, meet the mourners at the door,
   drive the dark procession down through town,
   toll the bell, dig the hole, tend the pyre.
   It's what we do. The daylong news is dire--
   full of true believers and politicos,
   bold talk of holy war and photo-ops.
   But here, brave men and women pick the pieces up.
   They serve the living, caring for the dead.
   Here the distant battle is waged in homes.
   Like politics, all funerals are local.