dead names

At the Second Cup on Greene Avenue I get a takeout petit corsé coffee balanced on a cardboard tray on the seat of my walker for tottering trip over to the Westmount Memorial triangle of a park in front of castle turret Westmount City Hall with no park bench now that most parks are meant to be decorative rather than actually utilized so its not easy for me to maneuver knapsack walker and coffee up close enough to the Memorial statue of a marching WWI soldier with hovering guardian angel to read in glint of sun the names on the ‘Honor Roll’ plinth expecting to find myself meditating on what those names might have meant or who they could have been had they lived but obviously they didn’t learn a fucking thing or else put it out of their memory
’Their Names Liveth Forever’ reads the brass inscription but the flag they once saluted is not flying