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the meaning—did you intend this?
    One stroke and you’ve consumed my waking days.
—Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton

CONDOLENCE
    Our scourge was to tell
    The death of Cecilia—
    Impossible
    This plague attacked
    It was brought here
    It spread rapidly
    Stopped regular activities
    Devoted itself absolutely
    We lost comparatively everything possible
    The sick was never one someone
    We want to feel
    This sickness
    Spared neither expense nor time nor trouble.
    Altogether we could be done
    This disease upon the country
    Was worse here than elsewhere
    It was not due
    Now that the plague resumed
    Our work we have now
    Trusting body we are *

    * Letter of condolence from Superintendent of the Yakama Indian Agency, Washington, October 29, 1918. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

LETTER FROM A NURSE
    Everybody has to die
    We consider ourselves lucky
    Believe us
    We were there & yet we intended staying,
    Home a whole string of things we can’t begin to name
    Oh!
    The first that died sure unnerved us
    Sunrise is such a horrible thing
    & yet
    Every day
    We are called & waiting
    If fortune favors us, we may find ourselves.
    Squeeze the life out of our hand
    There is so much to be said
    We don’t believe we should
    Ever get through
    One year normal
    Maybe we remember now.
    All the schools, churches, theaters, dancing halls, etc.
    Are closed here also.
    There is a bill in the Senate.
    We can’t help but hope.
    Ha! Ha!
    If we are not dead
    Write
    Write
    To be
    To do
    To— †

    † To her friend at the Haskell Indian Nations University, Kansas, October 17, 1918. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

[OURS]
    To hand right respect
    To the negroes—
    To Father death.
    Do not come for them.
    This is our opinion—
    As they are given
    By the will, the word.
    All negroes considered Debts,
    Parts which we are entitled to.
    A sort of epidemical cold
    Has seized every business &
    Establishment our health afflicted,
    We have recovered,
    The incision made
    By this impost-
    Hume has been cured.
    Join us in every good. ‡

    ‡ Letter from George Washington to Betty Washington Lewis, October 12, 1789. National Archives.

SELMA EPP
    They stood away.
    Made their own sick.
    People hoping—
    God, take away the illness.
    Everyone grew
    Weaker & weaker.
    The strongest carried
    Everyone.
    Protest.
    Daniel was two;
    He was just a little boy.
    His body took him away. §

    § An account by Selma Epp, who was a child in a Jewish neighborhood in North Philadelphia during the 1918 influenza epidemic.

THE DONOHUE FAMILY
    Usually people
    Fall
    People dy
    People should not have died.
    Most of them immigrants.
    These people came Promised Land.
    They came fresh
    &      they got
    Destroyed. ¶

    ¶ Account of Michael Donohue, whose family ran a funeral home when the 1918 influenza epidemic struck.

DONOHUE FAMILY LEDGERS
    Our common era can tell
    Who a person was,
    Where he lived, what he died of.
    But we become sloppy
    & confused, crossed out,
    Scribbled in borders—
    It’s nearly impossible to track
    Tragedy & turmoil.
    We didn’t.
    We buried people we knew.
    We buried strangers.
    A girl.
    To take care of people
    Was the decent thing to do.
    We had a responsibility.
    Scribbled at the bottom
    The ‘girl,’
    ‘This girl was buried in the trench.’
    This girl was our trench.
    Where else to put her. **

    ** Donohue on his Family Ledgers.

DC PUTSCH

    To view as reflowable text, see this page

    †† From the article “The Riots: An N.A.A.C.P. Investigation,” written by James Weldon Johnson in the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine in 1919.

The Soldiers (or Plummer)
    - .... . / ... --- .-.. -.. .. . .-. ...
How true to life,
    All too true . . . you sing the Achaeans’ fate,
    All they did and suffered, all they soldiered through,
    As if you were there yourself or heard from one who was.
    —Robert Fagles (translator), The Odyssey (8.548–551)
    Roy Underwood Plummer (1896–1966) was born in Washington, DC, & enlisted in the army in 1917. Corporal Plummer served in France in