For My Brother: Reported Missing in Action, 1943 by Thomas Merton Sweet brother, if I do not sleep My eyes are flowers for your tomb; And if I cannot eat my bread, My fasts shall live like willows where you died. If in the heat I find no water for my thirst, My thirst shall turn to springs for you, poor traveller. Where, in what desolate and smokey country, Lies your poor body, lost and dead? And in what landscape of disaster Has your unhappy spirit lost its road? Come, in my labor find a resting place And in my sorrows lay your head, Or rather take my life and blood And buy yourself a better bed Or take my breath and take my death And buy yourself a better rest. When all the men of war are shot And flags have fallen into dust, Your cross and mine shall tell men still Christ died on each, for both of us. For in the wreckage of your April Christ lies slain, And Christ weeps in the ruins of my spring: The money of Whose tears shall fall Into your weak and friendless hand, And buy you back to your own land: The silence of Whose tears shall fall Like bells upon your alien tomb. Hear them and come: they call you home.