Last Words
by John Musgrave

His eyes shone like bright blue lamps
against the pallor
of his skin

as his blood
flowed from wounds
into foreign soil.

His eyes, contrasting
with the spray of brown freckles
across his nose and cheeks,

were fixed upon mine
and filled with fear
as I yelled for a corpsman.

He was as brave as any man I’ll ever know
and he had never let his buddies down.

Since I was closest to him when he was hit
and kneeling beside him as he died,
I became the keeper of his last words.

How many men have died gallantly
in the mud of Flanders,
the snow of the Ardennes,

the black sand of Iwo Jima
or the frozen hills of the Chosin Reservoir
uttering the same words?

When I stand before
the Vietnam Memorial I hear
his words echo off that wall in sixty thousand voices.

As I write
I hear his words
in millions of voices and hundreds of tongues,

“Please, I don’t want to die!”