Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Mortality Rates

I sit and read the poems of the dead
Who wrote as dead men do about their sons
Who likewise died. They were before I read,
Before they wrote the poems. This line runs
Through almost every poet. Everyone's
Constantly in mourning for a child
They lost; sometimes a wife. There are tons
And tons of these, emotions running wild 
(As it should be, for who is calm and mild
When fathers bury sons?). I read and read
My own emotion tenderly beguiled
And feel the anger that the poems feed:
Children don't die the same way now, but will
We have vaccines. To end them is to kill.

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