" LA CHAPELLE. 92ND DIVISION. TED. (September, 1918)
This lonely beautiful word means church and it is quiet here; the stone walls curve like slow water.
It’s Sunday and I’m standing on the bitter ridge of France, overlooking the war. La Guerre is asleep. This morning early on patrol we slipped down through the mist and scent of burning woodchips (somewhere someone was warm) into Moyenmoutier… a cloister of flushed brick and a little river braiding its dark hair. Back home in Louisiana the earth is red, but it suckles you until you can sing yourself grown. Here, even the wind has edges. Drizzle splintered around us; we stood on the arched bridge and thought for a moment of the dead we had left behind in the valley, in the terrible noise. "

― Rita Dove , Collected Poems: 1974-2004