The coat without a seam, and other poems

Chapter 36: THE COUNTERSIGN

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About This Book

This collection of lyric and narrative poems moves between wartime urgency and reflective peace, offering sonnets, elegies, and short lyrics that interrogate sacrifice, patriotism, and the yearning for reconciliation. Voices range from public banners and martial images to intimate meditations on grief, domestic memory, and nature. Frequent religious and moral imagery frames contemplations of duty, loss, and the possibility of a unified humanity. Formal variety includes sonnet sequences and freer lyrics, often balancing didactic rhetoric with tender observation to consider how communities and individuals reckon with conflict, remembrance, and the promise of healing.

THE COUNTERSIGN

On guard my heavy Heart did stand,

And sleep had conquered her,

Had not one cold and rigid hand

Gripped honor like a spur.

It was the starkest watch of all,

The hour before the end.

Out rang the startled challenge-call:

“Halt! Who goes there?” “A Friend.”

“The countersign?” my spent Heart cried,

And forward-peering stood.

A Voice as strange as sweet replied:

“The word is BROTHERHOOD.”