(New Derry, Westmoreland County, PA) <br /> <br />Grandfather Lawrence, whom I never knew, <br />I wonder what appeasing light, if any, <br />may have eased your pain and strengthened you <br />as blind and bleeding underneath the many <br />winding caverns of the hellish earth, <br />your starved lungs gasping for a final breath, <br />you prayed for some miraculous rebirth <br />to justify the agony of death. <br /> <br />But what your friends could rescue from the ground <br />resembled only contours of a man. <br />And none dared utter words or make a sound <br />when Hilda (mother of my mother) ran <br />and tried to recognize your blackened face, <br />then covered it with light from her embrace.<br /><br />Leo Yankevich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/st-martin-s-cemetery/
