A few lines of very old poetry became my companion during a time of great social upheaval and change. Everyone remembers where they were when the planes hit the towers. I was in a conference room at work. Someone popped their head in the room and said "turn on the TV." Like almost everyone else, my initial reaction was stunned silence.

But what I remember most was that my first truly coherent thought was of a poem by Walt Whitman. "Beat! Beat! Drums!" That poem recurred to me over the next few days and weeks like a drum beat itself, keeping time with the drums of war.

It goes "Beat! beat! drums! Blow! Bugles! Blow!" I thought to myself, "Mind not the timid -- mind not the weeper or the prayer; Mind not the old man beseeching the young man…" In the days and months to follow: "Make no parlay -- stop for no expostulation…" and soon after "…Let not the child's voice be heard, nor the mother's entreaties;

Make even the trestles to shake the dead as they lie awaiting their hearses. So strong you thump O terrible drums, so loud you bugles blow."

It wasn't a personal revelation, but as my literary companion, it reminded me of the unchanging nature of war. Though Whitman was writing about the Civil War, it might as well have been the Iraq war.

Later I thought of another poem, "Dirge for Two Veterans." That poem also has drums, but they are drums of remembrance, and therefore of comfort. It often brings me a little inner peace, though we live in a time of war.

I often wonder when and how the meaning of the drum beats changed for Whitman in the time between writing the two poems. I wonder if we too could transform the drums of war into a drumbeat for peace.