Many poets are known for poems that do not represent their best work. Perhaps the best example of this unfortunate phenomenon is Joyce Kilmer, who is remembered for a poem that won the lasting enmity of the generations of 13-year-old boys who were forced to memorize it and, still worse, recite it—an ordeal that required the victim to utter the word "breast" in public without giggling.

But having just visited Kilmer's grave at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and recalling the events of Holy Week, I am not thinking about "Trees. " I am remembering one of the poems Kilmer wrote during the year of his death:

          Prayer of a Soldier in France

     My shoulders ache beneath my pack
     (Lie easier, Cross, upon His back).
     I march with feet that burn and smart
     (Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart).
     Men shout at me who may not speak
     (They scourged Thy back and smote Thy cheek).
     I may not lift a hand to clear
     My eyes of salty drops that sear.
     (Then shall my fickle soul forget
     Thy agony of Bloody Sweat?)
     My rifle hand is stiff and numb
     (From Thy pierced palm red rivers come).
     Lord, Thou didst suffer more for me
     Than all the hosts of land and sea.
     So let me render back again
     This millionth of Thy gift. Amen.

I am also remembering James Cagney in The Fighting 69th and hearing the echoes of "Taps" in Kilmer's "Rouge Bouquet."

Nicasius of Rheims, like his brother bishop Saint Denis, is among those saints known as “cephalophores,” or head-carriers. (Both were martyred by beheading, and I think that is all the artists wanted to convey by showing them holding their heads, but helpful guides will be happy to spin tales rivaling those of Washington Irving if you seem receptive.)

—at Reims Cathedral

One of the memorials at Compiègne, where the Armistice was signed in 1918.