The music of the anthem has no boundary,
no sworn allegiance, no nation save
the one we lower into its dying body.
A soldier kneels over a soldier’s grave,
and the tune is not the name he reads
but the hand that brushes the dirt to read it.
If you search the anthems of the world,
you see grief turn to pride, pride to spite.
Soon a motherland is deaf with words.
The music of the anthem does not decry
the politics of dissonance or closure.
It affirms nothing. And thus, it never lies,
never breaks the news in secret, the sons
set down in steady heartbeats: one, one, one.
from Denver Quarterly