In Gettysburg

In Gettysburg, the soldiers fell
In shock, in pain, in death,
As thousands from the North and South
Cried out with their last breath.

Their bodies lay in bloody fields,
A vista grim and stark;
Today, those hills have been restored
Into a hallowed park.

With monuments and obelisks 
Commemorating all
Who fought and died when barely grown,
Sucked in to wartime's thrall.

A marker made of stone records
The bodies there interred,
Remembered with a name or else
"Unknown," a lonely word. 

The numbers laid out state by state
Count lives the war's undone.
New York sustained the greatest loss -
Eight hundred sixty-one.

That just reflects the ones who died
Those three days in July
And after all these years, no one
Can really answer why.

The battlefields are there to see -
To visit and to tour
But sadly, war is a disease
For which there is no cure.