How do you do

by Daughter of Thranduil

A young man sits down beside a grave in a Paris cemetary and finds himself musing on it's occupant and the way he died.

How do you do, Julien Enjolras?

Permit me to disturb you and sit on the grass?

I'll rest for a while in the warm summer sun.

I've been working all day, and I'm nearly done.

I see by your gravestone, you were just twenty-two

When you fell in the chaos of eighteen thirty two.

Well I hope death was quick and I hope death was clean

or was it, young Julien, slow and obscene?

Did you leave a young wife, or a sweetheart behind?

In some broken young heart, is your memory enshrined?

For though nearly seventeen years you've been gone

In someone's mind I'm sure your memory lives on.

Or are you that son, who his parents won't name

imprisoned forever behind a glass pane

a beautiful portrait, causing royalist men shame –

a rebel immortal in a heavy gold frame.

The sun, it shines bright on old Paris's street

the ancient grey cobbles, they gleam at your feet.

The trees line the streets with their blooming green boughs –

no red flag, no barricade, there's no battlefield now.

But here in this graveyard, it is still no man's land

as nine somber grey gravestones in mute witness stand

to man's blind indifference to his fellow man

and a band of young rebels that were butchered and damned.

I can't help, Julien, but to wonder inside

do and your friends really know why you died.

Did you believe, when you rallied your cause

did you really believe that your fight could wars?

The injustice, the poverty, the sorrow, the shame,

The killing and dying; it was all done in vain.

For, young Julien, it all happened again

and again and again and again and again.

Here at you left, there lies Jean Prouvaire

And at your right side rests Etienne Combeferre.

So many young souls gone in one fateful day.

Like a doomed crusade in an old tragic play.

Did they play the drums slowly,

did they play the fife lowly,

did your family shed tears as they lowered you down?

Or did they scorn you and shame you for betraying the crown?

And now young Julien, I will bid you farewell

where your spirit is now, I guess no one can tell.

But I hope you're at peace, and I hope you are well

for a soul such as yours will have no place in hell.

So I'll go one my way on this clear summer night

and try hard as I can to remember your fight.

For though you were taken by death's cold embrace

some day you may see others rise to take your place.