"At the Vietnam Memorial" by George Bilgere

George Bilgere is a very contemporary poet; his last volume was published in 2009. He lives in Cleveland and teaches creative writing at John Carroll University.

Key terms: foreshadowing, irony, imagery, paradox, tone/mood

At the Vietnam Memorial

The last time I saw Paul Castle
it was printed in gold on the wall
above the showers in the boys’
locker room, next to the school
record for the mile. I don’t recall
his time, but the year was 1968
and I can look across the infield
of memory to see him on the track,
legs flashing, body bending slightly
beyond the pack of runners at his back.

He couldn’t spare a word for me,
two years younger, junior varsity,
and hardly worth the waste of breath.
He owned the hallways, a cool blonde
at his side, and aimed his interests
further down the line than we could guess.

Now, reading the name again,
I see us standing in the showers,
naked kids beneath his larger,
comprehensive force—the ones who trail
obscurely, in the wake of the swift,
like my shadow on this gleaming wall.

Bilgere's shocking poem is almost totally predictable from the beginning - from what we can infer based on the title. He is reflecting on an experience looking at a name on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. and remembering "the last time" he saw the young man that carried the name. The foreshadowing in the title and first lines is obvious, yet not overdone because the subject is always poignant and quite impossible to exaggerate. In fact, the imagery and depth of the first two and a half stanzas is clouded by the foreshadowing so that it is difficult to imagine a living boy in high school when we are so fully aware that the poem is about the memory of a dead soldier. The irony of the poem lies in this paradox, but also in the admiration that the poet seems to have had for Paul Castle as an older teammate. The tone implies that this respect still exists, although it is not mentioned in terms of his role in the war or his death. What does the narrator think of his friend's name on the wall?

http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/28490

Wikipedia on the Vietnam Memorial