Reflections for a Speech to be Given Before a Military Cemetery

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Every single person laid out in the ground here made the decision that my life was more important than theirs was. What are we to do with such ludicrous bravery? What can a putatively modern world do but stick such heroics in the earth and carry on, largely as though neither the bravery nor the brave themselves ever really existed?

We will put these fresh fearless into the dirt and we will cover them over and go home. But when the trumpet sounds some other time, let us never hold our minds back from recalling that the best of every generation go first into the grave--and this generation is no exception. There are no exceptions. Every free man's life is lived in taut tandem with another who died for him, who died so anonymously and so dutifully that we have even been granted the gift of living our days without thinking much about the price paid for them.

I shall not shake off, though I live a hundredyear, the mark that is on me. I am a lesser man, doubly so, because a greater man died for me, and because I didn't die for another in return.

Look out on this mowed pitch and take in, if you will, each white stone as the shape and thrall of a living person, clumsy and flawed and called out of their skin into glory. We must honor them, although our honor means nothing, and we must remember them always, even though our memory will always bring us shame.

What a long view they took--and what a shadow they cast, those who went first into a brand new day.

In Pace Requisicat