The letters always just evade the hand <br />One skates like a stone into a beam, falls like a bird. <br />Surely the past from which the letters rise <br />Is waiting in the future, past the graves? <br />The soldiers are all haunted by their lives. <br />Their claims upon their kind are paid in paper <br />That established a presence, like a smell. <br />In letters and in dreams they see the world. <br />They are waiting: and the years contract <br />To an empty hand, to one unuttered sound -- <br />The soldier simply wishes for his name.<br /><br />Randall Jarrell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mail-call/
