In the examination hall, the students
sit huddled over the desks, oblivious
of their surroundings. Only the bored invigilator
reads the columns of names
inscribed on the walls.
The school's war dead.
Endless lists of names. Besides each name
a date. As he walks around, he calculates
that at least a hundred did not live
to see their twenty-first birthday,
never knew adulthood; were no older
than the students below them. And he wonders:
had they foreseen this, would they still have gone?
And the students who now ignore them,
would they have gone too?
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