Memorial Day

I remember some excitement about Memorial Day, a holiday observed by fishing and drinking beer. It was a day off from school, of course, a prelude to three months of summer vacation – the short before the feature. In the morning was the parade down Pearl Road – brass bands, baton twirlers, floats, marching veterans from three or four wars. It ended at the cemetery where my mother now is buried. Prayers, solemn speeches, wreathes, the firing of a three-gun salute. One year it was Marines, firing bolt-action rifles. When they ejected the spent cartridges, a kid ran up, grabbed one from the grass and screamed when it burned his hand.

My last memory of Memorial Day at home dates from 1969 or 1970. I was 16 or 17, sullen beyond satisfaction, and conspicuously anti-Vietnam War. To the parade I carried Robert Lowell’s Notebook, with its cover the color of a UN peacekeeper’s helmet. From Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, I knew Lowell had marched on the Pentagon in October 1967, and that he had done time as a conscientious objector during World War II. My timid, bookish, passive-aggressive, silly protest. Here’s “Memorial Day,” by Daniel Mark Epstein:

“The library is closed – Memorial Day –
We honor men who died for our freedom
In wars that most of us cannot recall.
On the corner, men who should be schoolboys
Flag passing cars to deal cocaine.
The steel doors of the library are fit
For a vault. No windows figure in the wall
To let light shine on the books,
Just glass brick pocked by bullets
From drive-by shootings, thick glass
Cracked in spidery traceries
Like promises shattered. Light
From a million books burned in Berlin
Casts no shadow on the grey fortress
That is all this neighborhood will ever know
Of a library. Here the books are safe
But the readers are burning.”