[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 21, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S4911]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              LAMENTATION

 Mr. CHAFEE. Mr. President, I ask that a poem by Virginia 
Louise Doris be entered in the Record. Ms. Doris, distinguished poet 
and historian from my hometown of Warwick, RI, has written this poem to 
commemorate those who lost their lives in the bombing of the Murrah 
Federal Building in Oklahoma City over 2 years ago.
  The poem follows:

                              Lamentation

          (By Virginia Louise Doris, composed April 19, 1997)

       ``A Song that wanders only where an elegy sent''.


                              de profundis

     We tarry, roses breathing vanished-times broken,
     in this green-parting glade where agonies spoken.

     Oh! waiting heart! shall thy pulses always beat
     to the serephs pause of a presence so dear,
     that all dove-cote lowing cadance repeat
     its sweet, floating, accents to thine ear?

     Charcoal shadows lay their twilight fingers
     upon a barren wall, where roses sang a
     climbing song, and declivous wings brushed
     in summer flight, each petal instill life's
     incense to fulfill; the roar of fate decrees
     a sundered cherish.


                              in extremis

     In the long noon-tide of our sorrow, we questioned
     of the eternal morrow; we gaze in bonded awe
     far through the daystar's candle dimmed, or charnel
     tears and dust which tell our kindred roam.
     The beloved is keeping all, the waiting, murmuring,
     beloved lets nothing go, of clasp and want
     which tolls our famished moan, illumed by lyric
     cerement, spheres gush of dewy, languored,
     woes cascading vernal, flamy, biers of memory,
     the enchanted years.


                               in nomine

     Oh! waiting heart! Shall thy images always keep
     the remembrance of lost, embroidered-time,
     our realm-blessed joy unrolled, to weep
     unstemmed amid this sable, wounded, clime?
     We tarry, roses breathing vanished-times beckon,
     in this green-parting grove where seasons reckon.


                              in memoriam

       April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City, the Murrah Building.

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