<i> From the Prologue</i> of Kyrie, by Ellen Bryant Voigt

When does a childhood end? Mothers

sew a piece of money inside a sock,

fathers unfold the map of the world, and boys

go off to war--that’s an end, whether

they come back wrapped in the flag or waving it.

Ilene and I were what they kissed goodbye,

complicitous in the long dream left behind.

On one page, willful innocence,

on the next

an Army Captain writing from the ward

with few details and much regret--a kindness

she wouldn’t forgive, and wouldn’t be reconciled

to her soldier lost, or me in my luck, or the petals

strewn on the grass, or the boys still on the playground

routing evil with their little sticks.

From “Kyrie” by Ellen Bryant Voigt. (Norton: $17.95; 96 pp.) 1995 This is a group of sonnets describing the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, in which 25 million lives were lost worldwide, half a million in the United States. Voigt lives in Cabot, Vt. Reprinted by permission.